The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris is a gripping and well-researched book. Although based entirely on a true event, it had the verve and pace of the best sort of crime novel. I really liked the way Mr. Whicher popped up in the narrative but was defeated by the mystery surrounding the brutal crime. I loved it.

The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris is extremely well-written – no, it’s better than that. In November 1856, George Little, a clerk in a Dublin railway station, was brutally murdered at his desk in his locked office. The Irish police struggled to find the perpetrator. Scotland Yard sent out Detective Inspector Jack Whicher, but he had no success either. The police held and then released various people but only one suspect was tried in court. Although this was a true-life crime, Morris writes as well as any crime novelist and, to respect that, I shall give no spoilers.

The book is based upon the collection of government documents held in the National Archives of Ireland and newspaper reports. Morris points out differences between Irish law in the 1860s and British law of the 2020s. A husband and wife were deemed to be a single legal person (because a married woman has no separate legal existence during her marriage) and so a woman couldn’t give evidence against her husband, any more than she could sue herself. Because the government documents include interview transcripts and because reporters would scribble down dialogue in court to include in their newspaper reports, Morris is able to give us the actual words used by the players in this tragedy. It’s gripping, it really is.

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