A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium

Genre of book

True crime anthology

Age Group

Young adult (per Harris County Public Library). However, both teenagers and adult true crime aficionados will enjoy this sequential art anthology.

Number of pages

288 pages

Justification

Recommended in The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Graphic Novels (Goldsmith, 2017)

Plot Summary

Geary presents six short stories discussing famous murders during the Victorian Era. While The Ryan Mystery, The Crimes of Dr. E. W. Prithard, and The Abominable Mrs. Pearcy are rather dull by today’s standards of true crime stories, these stories introduce the reader to Geary’s simulated woodcut artistic style and the Victorian style of writing that he uses throughout the collection.

Things get more interesting with Jack the Ripper. Most people in the target audience will be familiar with the crimes of Jack the Ripper, so the story itself is difficult to spoil. However, Geary tells the tale from the point of view of a series of journals (diaries) of a Victorian contemporary who followed the news about the crimes closely. Detailed maps bring the Whitechapel neighborhood to life. If you believe you know who Jack the Ripper was going into this adaptation, you might find yourself surprised by the end of the story.

The Fatal Bullet tells the tale of the two young men from similar circumstances. Both had a hard life growing up in the American Midwest, but one overcame his circumstances with hard work and became James Garfield, president of the United States. The other, obviously afflicted with mental illness (it ran in the family), grew up to be Charles Guiteau, the assassin of James Garfield. As in Jack the Ripper, the Victorian style of writing and the faux woodcut art help draw the reader into the period of the murder.

The Beast of Chicago tells the tale of H. H. Holmes, the American serial killer active during the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago during 1896. More of a biography of Herman Mudgett, aka H. H. Holmes, than a mystery, it follows his movements, insurance fraud, polygamous marriages, and the tangled web of lies and murders so thick that even the murderer himself couldn’t keep it all straight. The floor plans of “The Castle” where many of the murders took place will cause even the most seasoned true crime aficionado to break out in goose bumps.

I am a true crime junkie, so I was already familiar with Jack the Ripper and had read Eric Larson's The Devil in the White City about H. H. Holmes, so I simply wanted to see how Geary's facts measured up against what I already knew. Geary is a master story-teller and wove in many facts about both killers in a way that was so compelling that it was hard to put the book down.

A Treasury of Victorian Murder Compendium  was classified as a young adult read at my library, but both teenagers and adult true crime aficionados will enjoy this sequential art anthology.

References

Geary, R. (2012). A treasury of Victorian murder compendium. NBM Publishing.

Goldsmith, F. (2017). The readers’ advisory guide to graphic novels (2nd ed.). American Library Association.