Nowadays, I go to the library to catch up on my TBR list, because I don’t have the money to buy books. But it’s not very fun to plan out all your borrowed books and I normally try to wander around and grab at least one book on impulse. The Murder of Harriet Monckton was this trip’s impulse borrow and I am so glad that I grabbed it!

Harriet Monckton was, to all appearances, a pious and educated single young lady. But after she was murdered, the police realised that she was six months pregnant. Since that was in Victorian times, it pretty much caused a scandal, and the book tells the story of what happened after her murder from the eyes of the four people who had reason to kill her. Although to be honest, there are only two real suspects. The four are:

Frances Williams, the headmistress of the local school, an outsider, and Harriet’s close friend.

Reverend George Verral, the pastor at the local Calvinist Church with a gift for preaching and some very dark secrets (one of the two I considered a suspect)

Thomas Churcher, the young man who was in love with Harriet, and

Richard Field, the older, wealthy Londoner who has a wife and a past with Harriet.

The story is told in five parts; three alternate between the POVs of the four main suspects, while one part is the confession of Reverend George Verral and the remaining section is the diary of Harriet. The diary is actually the only time where we get to hear Harriet speak for herself, and it pretty much shows the amount of self-interest each of the characters have.

This was a pretty thick book (497 pages including the afterword) but I managed to finish it within a day because it was just so gripping. Haynes does a good job of making us feel like we’re inside each person’s mind without descending into stream-of-consciousness – I particularly liked the way she wrote the thoughts for the Reverend Verral, although I don’t actually like him as a character.

I’d also recommend reading the afterword of the book. This is a story based on a true crime that sadly remains unsolved, and Haynes talks about how she discovered the original story and why she wrote the book the way she did in the afterword. There’s also information on how this story differs from the original and a transcription of one of the documents she mentioned.

If you like true crime and/or mysteries, I think you’ll like this. While the ending here is one that Haynes came up with, I can totally see it happening.