| Title | : | Hunted Down: the detective stories of Charles Dickens |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 30 |
| Publication | : | Published May 12, 2012 |
Hunted Down: the detective stories of Charles Dickens Reviews
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This short work is my first exposure to a Dickensian work of the mystery genre. As the title implies, Hunted Down is a story of a man (who is a villain) who is "hunted down" to expose his wicked deeds and bring him to justice. When described as such it sounds like a simple story but there is an ensuing mystery, for we don't learn about the man's villainous conduct until he was hunted down and exposed at the very end.
Overall, it was interesting enough, and I did enjoy the mystery part. The characters named and described in the typical Dickensian style were a treat to read. The plot wasn't wholly plausible, and although there is satisfactory explaining at the end, certain unexplanatory events injected a touch of unreality at times to the story. This is, of course, a short story, so allowances must be made. But, it was rather uncharacteristic of Dickens.
The story was engaging irrespective of the minor blemishes. Dickens hasn't forgotten his satire even in a grave theme like this. Dickens's genius is such that he could make contributions to any genre without waving in his authenticity. I like that very much about him. But if I'm to truly express my view, the mystery genre is not his forte. In that I think, Collins surpasses him. -
Text + audio. I think I like Charles Dickens' short stories better than his looooooong books. Lol!
Synopsis: "The main character is a smart and attentive man named Sampson. One day he sees a strange Mr. Julius Slinkton in his office. Sampson begins to suspect that this man is hiding something necessary from other people. Mr. Slinkton appears in the life of the main character more often. Sampson understands that a crime is occurring and it must be stopped. Sampson turns into a real hunter of criminals." -
3.75 stars for the title story, “Hunted Down.” In this shorter work from about 1860, Charles Dickens tries his hand at the detective genre (loosely speaking). This story is free to read online
here at Project Gutenberg.
Mr. Sampson, the narrator, now retired from work, was formerly the manager of a life assurance (insurance) firm. After a brief discussion on how people can be deceiving ("Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away."), he settles into telling the story of his encounters with one Mr. Slinkton ... whose name, in classic Dickens-style, already gives you a hint of his slimy character.
Sampson dislies Slinkton on first sight - a lot of it, humorously, is tied to Slinkton's hairdo, which seems to make unspoken but firm demands on how people are to treat Slinkton. But Sampson gradually relents toward Slinkton. As they meet a few more times they discuss the sad case of Mr. Meltham, a young actuary whose girlfriend tragically died, as well as Slinkton's two nieces who have lived with him, one of whom has also passed away. Slinkton also becomes involved in obtaining life insurance from Sampson for another man, Mr. Beckworth. Slinkton's actions seem suspicious, but is he really a villain?
There are a few plot twists and surprises, including a narrator who isn't entirely reliable. Reading it a second time, I can see a lot of great double meanings hidden in Sampson's words. There's a typical Dickensian helpless maiden and a Victorian-type tragedy, along with a bittersweet wrapup.
It's an intriguing and quick read, worthwhile if you have any fondness for Victorian era mystery tales. Apparently it was inspired by Charles Dickens' familiarity with a scandalous case of a poisoner around that time. It's not quite up to the level of Wilkie Collins' or Arthur Conan Doyle's best, but there are some interesting psychological things at play in this story.
Another group read with the Dickensians! group (which has some excellent commentary and analysis in the threads, BTW). -
An observer of men who finds himself steadily repelled by some apparently trifling thing in a stranger is right to give it great weight. It may be the clue to the whole mystery. A hair or two will show where a lion is hidden. A very little key will open a very heavy door.
Charles Dickens, a very versatile writer, gives us a well-crafted detective story. I am always pleased if such a story provides me all the necessary clues to solve the case and I’m still surprised at the end. That was the case here.
Dickens loves to play with names, and here he gives us our suspect, Mr. Slinkton. Puts you right onto the kind of personality you can expect from this slinky, arrogant criminal. That’s not a spoiler, Dickens tells us who to suspect from the beginning, just not what to suspect him of.
I read this story with the rather new group,
Dickensians and would encourage anyone who might be interested in either Dickens or the time in which he lived to join in. We are reading short stories during August and finding the discussions very interesting. -
Well, Dickens was indeed a prolific and very succesful writter fathering classics and creating inmortal and unforgettable characters and villains ..
Until now I did enjoy his novels and short stories like "A Tale Of Two Citys" or "Oliver Twist", even "A Chrismas Carol"..
But "Hunted Down" seems to me like Sherlock Holmes written by Dickens!!
In fact this is a crime story..
But with the subtle and unmistakable Dickensians touch!!!
Like I said a short story which will take not much of your time to read..
If you are like me a lover of Charles Dickens literary work, then it will be a rewarding experience to know more about the deep and gloomy recesses of such a fine mind as our writter had!!
The reason for three stars is that I wish the story to be much longer..
Also the beginning felt to me a little dry and tough..
But otherweise if you will let the story roll and win momentum then you will be up for a very exotic treat somewhat unusual from the expeted food Mister Dickens is used to dish to his readers..
Happy readings
Dean;) -
"Hunted Down" is a short mystery by Charles Dickens. The narrator knows more than he's telling us, but it all comes together at the end when the culprit is revealed. 3.5 stars.
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This was a very interesting short story. I found it compelling, and sometimes laugh out loud funny, but there is a sudden change of atmosphere and then everything changes.
I've read it once and see one point of view, what the author wishes. So now I'm going to go back to get the second point of view. Or what was really going on.
I found this to be a dark story in the end, but I did like it. -
This review is just for the title story, "Hunted Down" (19 pages). Although I was engaged throughout the story and propelled to read to the end, there were a couple of aspects that didn't work for me. First, I wasn't quite sure what the mystery and conflict actually was for the bulk of the story, although I had my suspicions. And then suddenly the end wrapped up with a tidy summary of what the main character suspected and how the mystery was solved. It was all too quick a wrap up, especially since I felt I was not given enough details or time for me to try and work out the conflict for myself. Also, I missed the typical Dickens humor that was absent in this story.
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Charles Dickens-Hunted Down
✍"I confess, for my part, that I HAVE been taken in, over and over again. I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any other class of persons. How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite misread their faces?
No. Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in suffering them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away."
✍"In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who then spoke to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently impressed me when his purpose was before him."
🇷🇸
🕵️♂️Moj prvi susret s Dikensom u žanru detektivska priča.
🕵️♂️Brza naracija
🕵️♂️Napeto
🕵️♂️Preokret na kraju
🕵️♂️Dikensov humor i pouka su,naravno,prisutni
🕵️♂️Kratko i veoma simpatično. 👍👍👍
🇺🇸
🕵️♂️First time reading Dickens' detective story
🕵️♂️Fast narative
🕵️♂️Tense
🕵️♂️Plot twist at the end
🕵️♂️Dickensian humor and moral are present,too
🕵️♂️Short and very,very nice read👍👍👍
#7sensesofabook #bookstagram #classicliterature #knjige #literature #readingaddict -
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First read: 19th July, 2012 (3 stars)
Second read: 11th November, 2015 (2 stars)
Despite having read this before, I have no recollection of the story Hunted Down: roguery and trickery abound around the streets of London with a good dollop of romance and the inevitable Victorian obsession with death. Fairly regular, well-written and very Dickensian but with an air of quick shortness that his other short works for result own. Not terrible, but not terribly great, either. Rather languid in places, though the characterisation stretches further than his other shorter stories.
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Etsy -
One might not necessarily think of Dickens as a mystery writer, but detectives and criminals do figure into much of his work. This...gathers a dozen of his stories featuring cops of one kind or another.
Free download available at
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Opening lines:
Most of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men, however unpromising the opportunity may, at first sight, seem. -
It is
1) Charles Dickens
2) A study in how thrillers were written like 100s of years ago.
3) Interesting premise and some great characters.
There is an extra star for the nostalgia a Charles Dickens invokes. -
Dickens Departing into Collins Country
According to Dickens’s friend and biographer John Forster, Dickens wrote his short story Hunted Down because he was offered the princely sum of £ 1,000 for it by an American weekly paper, The New York Ledger. Of course, the fact that a writer had the opportunity to earn a small fortune with a story does not necessarily detract from its value as a piece of literature or a source of entertainment. Nevertheless, in the case of Hunted Down, whose antagonist was, once again, inspired by a real-life murderer, Dickens seems, to me, to have been out of his element; maybe even trying to poach in Wilkie Collins Country.
Hunted Down has a first-person narrator by the name of Mr. Sampson, who is the chief-manager of a life insurance company. One day, Mr. Sampson makes the acquaintance of a gentleman named Julius Slinkton, who says that he has come to make terms for a life insurance on behalf of a friend of his, a Mr. Beckwith. He also repeatedly enquires about a certain Mr. Meltham, who also sold insurances but withdrew from the business and sought solitude since the woman he intended to marry died unexpectedly. Mr. Sampson also learns that Mr. Slinkton had two nieces, one of whom died after a short but serious disease, the other niece, a Miss Margaret Niner, also being of frail health. You can possibly imagine how all this is going to go on.
If there is anything very positive that can be said about the story, it is Dickens’s use of a first-person narrator who keeps certain information from his readers in order to surprise them the more at the end of the story. Saying that, however, one might – rightly – argue that withholding information for a coup de théâtre is not exactly what makes a good unreliable narrator; this kind of perspective is much more suitable when it comes to presenting the reader with a mentally deranged, a prejudiced or a downright devious character, and Mr. Sampson is definitely none of these.
We might also say that the downfall of Mr. Slinkton, the murderer of his niece, is effected in a very contrived and hardly realistic way, which makes the story rather fanciful. Apart from that, readers will soon get weary of the narrator’s obsession with the way Mr. Slinkton wears his hair in that it is quite strange what importance Mr. Sampson attaches to his customer’s parting, likening it in his imagination to a garden path that he is being led up. In a work of the scope of Dombey and Son the narrator’s frequent mention of Mr. Carker’s white teeth might not become too repetitive and even help to identify and define the character, but in a short story the obsessive references to Mr. Slinkton’s parting are of a different calibre. In fact, Mr. Slinkton does not really come to life at all any more than his parting does.
In his failure to do so, however, he is sinning in the company of his niece – the one that is actually supposed to be alive, Margaret Niner, but who is just another of Dickens’s drab and passive female characters. Also Mr. Meltham, who has a major hand in hunting Slinkton down, readily sacrifices his life for the sake of cheap melodrama – because the woman he wanted to marry has died, and now that he brought down her murderer, his life is void of purpose, a drudge and burden for him and so on and so on … A few months after Mr. Slinkton’s downfall, Mr. Meltham passes away; in real life, he would probably have taken up golf, or married the other Miss Niner.
It’s quite obvious that when writing Hunted Down Dickens wanted to try his hand at what Wilkie Collins was good at, without, though, achieving Collins’s skills of creating interesting heroines and (relatively) believable plots. -
Minor Dickens novella.
Minor Dickens novella.
I have like the works of Dickens for fifty years. This slight novella was unknown to me and I can see why. This reads like an outline of a novel. It is missing the rich detail I am used to in his fully realized works. -
Bettie's Books -
I finished this and immediately started over and reread it. I occasionally do that with short stories, rarely with anything long. In this case I felt I had missed something. I don’t wish to take anything away from this story. Dickens as usual is masterful with his characters. My short coming was with the plot. Twice, I missed how Slinkton became suspect of wrong doing. I can only assume clairvoyance on the part of Mr. Sampson.
My minor problems aside, this is a story worth the time taken to read, mostly because it is by Charles Dickens, also it's short. -
A short story about an insurance salesman who doesn’t trust one of his acquaintance.
We know from the beginning who the villain is, but we’re not sure what he is doing. Nice satisfying ending. -
As a 21st century reader, it is hard not to compare this fledgling work of detective fiction to current standards. And yet if we try to put ourselves into the minds of its first readers imagining their fascination with how sleuths went about solving crimes in Victorian England, this short story by Dickens comes to life. It is a quick read, so if you do not have time for his longer novels, or you have tried one and not succeeded, this might be the answer. Surely entertaining!
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Fast read at the clinic.
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This is such an interesting read. What I learned is that you never trust a man with a center parting. Hah. I'm new to the shorts of Charles Dickens but his short stories have a more detective feel to them. Very interesting and so full of description.
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Dickens führt den Schurken wie die Leser brillant aufs Glatteis, technisch fünf Sterne, leider bleibt das Personal etwas blass, bzw. zu sehr auf Distanz.
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Not a bad story, but hardly one to remember. To be honest, I didn't actually quite make out what the ending really meant. Below average and forgettable for Dickens.
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It was okay
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This was a well written mystery story. Had I not known who wrote it, i would not have guessed this to be a work of Charles Dickens. It's wonderfully written but the writing style was quite different from any Dickens book I've read.
The name of the villain is pure Dickens. Truly delightful.
A fun story of deceit and deception. -
Written by Charles Dickens, this is a small book or possibly a short story.
Mr. Sampson is the retired Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office — an insurance company. When a Mr. Julius Slinkton comes into the offices seeking information “for a friend",” Sampson takes an instant dislike to the fellow. Slinkton is looking for information on insurance for his “friend.”
Slinkton has heard of Sampson through a mutual friend. Over a period of time, Slinkton works to ingratiate himself to Sampson. Sampson gives Slinkton the impression that he considers Slinkton to be an “alright person.” The real truth is to the contrary.
Slinkton keeps showing up more and more. Sampson learns of Slinkton’s two nieces, one who had recently passed away and the other who was has poor health. Sampson becomes suspicious and comes up with a plan to investigate Slinkton and what he is up to.
The story is told in the first person, similar to the style of Wilke Collins and others of the Victorian era. It moves at a pretty good clip as you read. A short read, but I enjoyed it. Guess I may read a few more of Dickens’ works. Not a favoured author in school, but things can change over the years! -
A collection of twelve detective stories by Charles Dickens, two of which are excerpts from novels whilst the remainder are short stories published originally between 1836 and 1860. Some of the stories are typical, moralistic Victorian tales, whilst others are more like series of anecdotes by the detectives narrating the piece. Most of the stories are set in London in the early days of the establishment of a metropolitan detective force, and make for interesting atmospheric tales as a result. A thirteenth tale first published in 1905 and written by M.R. James, is about the questions raised by the unfinished ‘Mystery of Edwin Drood’ novel. An enjoyable book for all readers of Charles Dickens or of Victorian short stories.
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Started 17 Feb 2014 finished 19 Feb 2014
Read as part of my self imposed Dickens challenge to read all his works.
Short story with the usual moral. Seems the villain's true colours are known from the outset and that the story is basically a plot to catch him, which, as with all Dicken's moral tales (i.o.w, all his tales) happens. Life insurance scams, murdering of a "niece", revenge and more death were all quite a lot to cram into a short story however, as expected, Dickens "does". -
I read this because it was by Charles Dickens. I finished it last night or the night before, and I can't even remember what it was about. When I was reading it I didn't know what was happening.
