“Why in the name of
literature must I be fobbed off with long discussions of the detective's
personal problems? Am I a couch?"
—Jacques
Barzun
Dr. Mawsley, the Harley Street gland specialist,
was not universally liked, but everyone agreed that he knew his stuff. He was,
in effect, the top man in the country for all things gland-related, which makes
his sudden death all the more mysterious. You see, Mawsley was alone in a room
while his butler stood outside the door. Suddenly, there comes the sound of a
crash, and when the butler enters the room, he sees his master lying on the
floor, dead, having given himself a fatal dose of strychnine. It happens in
John Rhode’s Death in Harley Street.
Was it suicide? Of course not—Mawsley simply wasn’t
that kind of man. Utterly self-centered, his practice was thriving and he had
much to look forward to. (In fact, he had just spent that evening discussing an
unexpected £5,000 legacy that he had inherited.) Besides,
suicide was far out of character. So was it murder? Equally unlikely, for
several reasons that John Rhode details thoroughly (but which I can’t afford to
go into). So it must have been an accident. But how could such an eminent
doctor make such a stupid mistake and willingly give himself a lethal
injection?
Dr. Priestley therefore deduces that this murder
was the result of neither accident, nor suicide, nor murder—indeed, this is the
Fourth Dimension of crime! Death in
Harley Street has got one of the most ingenious mystery plots I’ve ever
come across. The central mystery—just how did the doctor make his lethal
mistake?—has got a pleasantly original and wholly plausible solution. (I really
wonder why this plot device hasn’t been ripped off in any of the books I’ve
read thus far.) The clueing is also strictly fair-play.
Unfortunately, the book’s pace is non-existent.
This is a very, very static book.
Almost everything is a conversation. Even the murder takes place off-stage,
with Priestley only finding out about the problem after the fact, so the murder
is part of a conversation as well! Some of the conversations are interesting, but reading a book
where nothing conversations happen gets dull fairly quickly. You have to set
your mind to it, but it can still be a difficult read when the going is slow.
I wonder if this was an attempt by John Rhode to
tell an ingenious mystery with more complex characters. After all, although the
victim was a wholly unpleasant person, we see that some people will miss him,
such as an elderly patient of Dr. Oldland’s, whose last hope lay is Dr. Mawsley
and who is now for all intents and purposes dying of a condition no one else
knows how to treat. The ending also throws new light on some characters, and I
couldn’t help but agreeing heartily with Dr. Priestley’s final line.
Unfortunately, if this indeed was
John Rhode’s intent, it didn’t work. This is mainly because the book’s lack of
pacing really ruins it.
I quickly figured out one part of the solution – I
dare not say what, but suffice to say most readers will spot this one thing. (In fact, until I read the conclusion for
myself I was afraid previous reviews were over-hyping the book’s ingenuity.)
But despite the book’s complete lack of pacing, I found myself enjoying it
quite a bit. The solution is very
ingenious, and although the book can be a chore to read at times it’s worth the
journey. It might not be the most exciting
John Rhode, but in terms of ingenuity, it’s one of the best I’ve come across
thus far. (Of course, I’m biased, since I really liked the nature of the
solution to begin with.) I tend to agree with Messrs. Barzun and Taylor,
although I wouldn’t go so far as to call this one “surely the best of the lot”
as they do in A Catalogue of Crime.
But purely puzzle-plot-wise, this is a tour de force.
Patrick Ohl ©2013
The
nineteen-year-old Patrick Ohl writes reviews of the books he reads on his blog,
At
the Scene of the Crime. In his spare
time he plots a takeover of the world, being careful to factor everything
except for Bruce Willis into his equations.
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