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    The Murder of Harriet Monckton
    Unavailable
    The Murder of Harriet Monckton
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    The Murder of Harriet Monckton
    Ebook568 pages12 hours

    The Murder of Harriet Monckton

    By Elizabeth Haynes

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    From the award-winning and bestselling author of Into the Darkest Corner comes a delicious Victorian crime novel based on a true story that shocked and fascinated the nation.

    On 7th November 1843, Harriet Monckton, 23 years old and a woman of respectable parentage and religious habits, is found murdered in the privy behind the chapel she regularly attended in Bromley, Kent.

    The community is appalled by her death, apparently as a result of swallowing a fatal dose of prussic acid, and even more so when the surgeon reports that Harriet was around six months pregnant.

    Drawing on the coroner’s reports and witness testimonies, Elizabeth Haynes builds a compelling picture of Harriet’s final hours through the eyes of those closest to her and the last people to see her alive. Her fellow teacher and companion, her would-be fiancé, her seducer, her former lover—all are suspects; each has a reason to want her dead.

    Brimming with lust, mistrust and guilt, The Murder of Harriet Monckton is a masterclass of suspense from one of our greatest crime writers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMyriad Editions
    Release dateSep 28, 2018
    ISBN9781912408054
    Unavailable
    The Murder of Harriet Monckton
    Author

    Elizabeth Haynes

    Elizabeth Haynes is a former police intelligence analyst, a civilian role that involves determining patterns in offending and criminal behavior. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Into the Darkest Corner, Dark Tide, Human Remains, and, most recently, Under a Silent Moon, the first installment of the Briarstone crime series.

    Read more from Elizabeth Haynes

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    Reviews for The Murder of Harriet Monckton

    3.5/5

    30 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      November 1843, Harriet Monckton is found poisoned behind the chapel. Who could have harmed Harriet and why.This is a fictional account but drawn from original reports and true witness testimonials. I did enjoy the majority of the book and it is very different to previous works by the author. The story is told by people who are close to Harriet in very different ways. From the beginning I was drawn into the story and the first chunk is about the finding of Harriet and the inquest. Following real events the inquest fails to come to a conclusion so a couple of years later is reopened. This part of the book I did find a bit slow. The second inquest for me dragged on and became a little repetitive and at this point I did start to become a little bored. However I kept going then the story then changes and the reader gets to see what did happen and from the point of view of Harriet via her journal. For me this saved the book and it was my favourite part.I enjoy books based on true events and I like to discover pockets of history that I have never known. Harriets is a sad tale but I enjoyed her story and it's a shame that in reality the it will never be solved only in fiction.
    • 5/5
      Author Elizabeth Haynes stumbled across a trove of documents in the UK’s National Archives relating to an obscure mid-1840s murder in the (then) small town of Bromley, a few miles southeast of London. The coroner’s jury verdict was delayed several years because of the case’s numerous uncertainties and the plethora of suspects.Haynes uses those uncertainties to create a fictional story that begins from the certain knowledge that on 6 November 1843, Harriet Monckton took or was administered poison, died, and her body stowed in the privy behind the Congregational Chapel. When the next day she’s noted as missing, a search ensues. Even before her body is found, multiple efforts are under way to mislead, mischaracterize, and otherwise frustrate any inquiries. The story is imagined from the points of view of several real-life people, chief among them: Harriet’s friend, the schoolteacher Frances Williams; Reverend George Verrall, her confidant; Thomas Churcher, a shoemaker in love with her; and Richard Field, Harriet’s former mentor and lover, now married and living in London. Verrall and Churcher are the more obvious suspects, though if a wider net were cast, Williams and Field or even Field’s wife and Churcher’s ex-fiancée might be suspected.Each of these characters provides an account of their association with Harriet—both in response to the coroner’s questioning and in their private thoughts. It’s a Rashomon-like treatment, with each not only seeing the sketchy facts in different ways, but recounting them to their best advantage. Haynes gives each a distinct voice and point of view, not all admirable. Her slightly old-fashioned writing style helps transport you to the era. All of their views, however revelatory, are one step removed from Harriet herself, but you finally do hear from her directly when Frances reads her diary. Haynes’s Bromley is completely convincing, as are the reactions of the residents as one secret after another is revealed and as some secrets manage to remain hidden. As the author says, “The impact on my life has been profound, to the extent that I feel as if I have inhabited Bromley in 1843 myself.” I felt it too. Even though the book’s events took place a long time ago, the tension was fresh.Harriet is a character who isn’t so much described as assembled. Like the build-up of daubs of paint that produce a portrait, Haynes’s text-clues allow you, eventually, to see the dead woman, with all her flaws and vibrancy, as she was in life.
    • 4/5
      I didn't figure out who killed Harriet until well into the book when a few things came together and I read (correctly) between the lines. While it's not a 'true crime' book in the traditional sense of that term, it is based on real events and none of the names were changed even though the solution is fiction. It's a little plodding, but overall interesting and the several different narrators were used to good effect.When men read books like this, do they feel shame over the way their gender as a whole has treated women as a whole? Probably not. Men are excellent at excusing their own behavior and blaming us. We're the tempters. We're the sinners. We're the ones who 'got ourselves into trouble' as if every birth is a virgin one. Women bear the brunt of control, suppression, oppression and restrictions because men can't control themselves. It's maddening.Also maddening is that women don't band together to tell the men to fuck off. Instead they knuckle under (sometimes literally) and treat women nearly as bad. If we stuck together a bit more, I bet our gender wouldn't suffer so much.