Charles Dickens’ Bleak House is amazing. We think it’s his best work. And Inspector Bucket is a pretty great detective.
C. Auguste Dupin and Inspector Bucket
(spoiler alert) Most nineteenth-century illustrations for Bleak House featured Charles Dickens’s tenacious criminal investigator, Inspector Bucket, a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police charged with investigating the murder of Sir Leicester Dedlock’s lawyer attorney, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Inspector Bucket is arguably as important as Edgar Allan Poe’s detective C. Auguste Dupin. Dupin, of course, is the protagonist of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter,” and “The Murder of Marie Roget, and he was the forerunner of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.
Together, the amateur detective Auguste Dupin and the police detective Inspector Bucket were the first professional criminal investigators in English literature.
With his “attentive face, and his hat and stick in his hands, and his hands behind him,” Inspector Bucket seems to notice everything. Dickens may have based the character of Inspector Bucket on the real-life investigator Charles Frederick Field (1805-1874) of the Metropolitan Police (later, he became a private detective). Dickens and Inspector Field got to know each other through Dickens’s nighttime wanderings through the seedier parts of London, which were hotbeds of criminal activity.
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin Bleak House Podcast
Tea, Tonic, and Toxin is a book club and podcast for people who are (or will soon become) obsessed with mysteries and thrillers. Each month, your hosts, Carolyn Daughters and Sarah Harrison, will discuss a game-changing mystery and thriller. We’ll start with stories and novels from the 19th century.
We invite you to join us in reading and exploring these mysteries and thrillers, all of which have shaped the genre and stood the test of time. You can check out the current book club and podcast schedule here.
In a Nutshell
WHAT TO READ: Bleak House by Charles Dickens
HOW TO READ: Buy it new on Amazon, buy it used on ThriftBooks or AbeBooks, or read it for free courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
READING TIME: 18 hours
Yes, 18 hours is a long time. But did we mention that Bleak House is amazing? Totally worth it.
RELEASE DATE: March and April 2022
