I read this book for the Mount TBR
Reading Challenge hosted over at My Reader’s Block from January 1 – December 31, 2015. The challenge is to read books
that you already own.
The Big Bow
Mystery - Israel Zangwill
In the
introduction to this Victorian mystery, the editor claims that this novella may be the first true locked-room mystery. A landlady and ex-police detective
bust open a locked door to find “the deceased lying back in bed with a
deep wound in his throat… There was no trace of any instrument by which the cut
could have been effected: there was no trace of any person who could have
effected the cut. No person could apparently have got in or out.”
Zangwill tweaks the media of the day for its relentless
pandering to the morbid curiosity of the ordinary reader. There are ironically
melodramatic scenes of the arrest of the suspect and courtroom antics of the
judge, lawyers, and jury. The explanations for the impossible crime range from
the plausible (secret passages and trapdoors) to the hilarious (a
razor-wielding monkey coming down the chimney). Red herrings abound. The
suspect has a realistic if rotten motive.
Zangwill’s
prose will ramble, but this is made up for by its high-spirits and humor. He’s
a master of the quip and wisecrack, in the traditions of Groucho Marx and Woody
Allen. For readers into mysteries of all sorts or those into reading the
occasional pre-Golden Age mystery.
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