Menu
Death on Ireland’s Eye: The Victorian Murder Trial that Scandalised a Nation
Bottom of the pile
12
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
6/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Dean Ruxton
Publisher:
Gill Books
Date:
April 10, 2022
A tragic death, a murder trial and a 170-year-old mystery â but what really happened?
What The Reviewers Say
... examination and cross-examination of witnesses given in intriguing and dramatic detail.
Ruxton is aware that writing historical non-fiction has its own questions and constraints: do you stick faithfully with documented facts and avoid speculation about an individual’s thoughts or feelings? To do so is admirably accurate yet can create an exhaustingly rigid story. The Irish Times journalist has instead used his research to give voices and emotions to the humans behind the facts (which can be far more difficult with unpredictable real people than malleable fictional ones). The light touch evident in chapter titles has a podcast-like conversational quality, yet he also treats the subject of domestic abuse with care and sensitivity.
Dean Ruxton has written an authoritative and very readable account of a case which, were it to have happened today, would likely cause just as sensational a scandal now as it did in 1852..
... admirably detailed.
