A Noted Mystery Writer Explores a Sensational 19th Century Crime
The Case of Constance Kent
Notes: The author of the Dr. Priestley series of murder mysteries offers a true-crime narrative of one of the most sensational police stories of 19th century England.
Constance Kent's four-year-old brother was murdered in 1860 by having his throat cut in an outhouse. The boy's nursemaid was arrested and then released when Jack Whicher, the best detective at Scotland Yard, began to suspect the boy's sister. Constance Kent was convicted and spent twenty years in prison.
This case inspired portions of Wilkie Collins' detective novel The Moonstone and Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood, among many other books, plays, and movies. 278 pages; frontispiece portrait of the subject.
Edition + Condition: First American edition from British sheets. A very good copy in a very good, price-clipped dust jacket. Top edge dusty; some foxing to the preliminaries; jacket spine tanned; light chipping to top edge of jacket. Like most of Rhode's books from the 1920s, this one is scarce in a dust jacket.
Publication: New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1928.
Item No: #307560
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