The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery. Israel Zangwill
solutions put forward in the course of the novel were some of these suggestions.)
The previous quarter-century had seen the publication of landmark novels of detective fiction: Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case (1878). And in the years immediately preceding The Big Bow Mystery the appearance of the world’s first ‘consulting detective’, Sherlock Holmes, ushered in the pre-Golden Age of detective fiction. Two of Holmes’s full-length investigations—A Study in Scarlet (1888) and The Sign of (the) Four (1890)—were followed by the first dozen of the phenomenally successful short stories in the Strand magazine, beginning in July 1891 with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. So when Zangwill’s novel was published, the public appetite for crime fiction was well established—and almost insatiable.
Zangwill, the son of Latvian and Polish immigrants, was born in London’s East End and showed literary promise as early as eighteen. A teacher for some years after he graduated from London University, he eventually left the profession to write full-time, publishing hundreds of essays, as well as novels, short stories and plays produced in London and New York. His work concentrated on political, social and Jewish issues but The Big Bow Mystery was his only venture into detective fiction.
Given this background, his novel is more socially aware than many of its contemporaries. Two of the main characters are closely involved with the labour movement and a detailed picture of the social conditions of London’s East End and its denizens is conveyed through the characters and their circumstances. Dickensian names—the upright Arthur Constant, the hugely entertaining Mrs Drabdump, the enigmatic Edward Wimp, the elusive Jessie Dymond and the wonderfully named Denzil Cantercot—help to reinforce this milieu. A less than flattering picture of the police, and their initial attempts to solve the case, against a background of ‘a frigid grey mist’ and ‘cold [that] cut like a many-bladed knife’ contribute to the overall mood of a powerless stratum of society.
In the course of the novel the reader is treated to a baffling murder, an investigation, an inquest, a checking of alibis, a court case, a last-minute revelation and a shocking denouement; in fact, most of the components of the best detective fiction. And throughout, the locked room problem shares centre-stage with the ‘whodunit’ element. A nod to Poe in Chapter IV and the somewhat similar problem presented to his detective and readers in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is inevitable; although rest assured that while the problem in both stories may be similar, Zangwill’s solution is totally different. Arguably it is superior, because, like all clever solutions, it contains elements of the psychological as well as the physical; as the villain confidently asserts in the closing pages, ‘to dash a half-truth in the world’s eyes is the surest way of blinding it altogether’. The explanation of the riddle is, in retrospect, tantalisingly simple and maddeningly obvious and, as with many such problems, if you can discern the ‘how’, you automatically know the ‘who’. Variations on the solution have been adapted and adopted many times since; and by some of the most resourceful practitioners in the genre.
Perhaps because ‘the solution of the inexplicable problem agitated mankind from China to Peru’ and had been ‘discussed in every language under the sun’, the novel features, in the closing chapters, the (unnamed) Home Secretary, as well as a guest appearance by William Gladstone. Zangwill writes in a prefatory Note that the justification for introducing the then Prime Minister ‘into a fictitious scene is defended on the grounds that he is largely mythical’.
Within a decade of Zangwill’s novel, Sherlock Holmes returned, miraculously, from the Reichenbach Falls, Chesterton’s immortal Father Brown and Freeman’s famous Dr Thorndyke began their careers in ‘The Blue Cross’ (1903) and The Red Thumb Mark (1907) respectively; and the world of crime fiction was never the same again.
The Big Bow Mystery was filmed in a semi-silent version as The Perfect Crime in 1928 and as The Verdict in 1946. With the former very much in the public consciousness when Collins began The Detective Story Club imprint in July 1929, Zangwill’s book was an obvious choice as one of the launch titles, and explains the change of title on the jacket, even though it was still entitled The Big Bow Mystery inside.
DR JOHN CURRAN
Dublin, March 2015
PREFACE OF MURDERS AND MYSTERIES
AS this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or favour. The Big Bow Mystery seems to me an excellent murder story, as murder stories go, for, while as sensational as the most of them, it contains more humour and character creation than the best. Indeed, the humour is too abundant. Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages to create. Humour is out of tone; it would be more artistic to preserve a sombre note throughout. But I was a realist in those days, and in real life mysteries occur to real persons with their individual humours, and mysterious circumstances are apt to be complicated by comic. The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer’s solution should satisfy. Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough till the dénouement is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been robbed of his breath under false pretences. And not only must the solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new circumstance upon his reader at the end. Thus, if a friend were to ask me to guess who dined with him yesterday, it would be fatuous if he had in mind somebody of whom he knew I had never heard. The only person who has ever solved The Big Bow Mystery is myself. This is not paradox but plain fact. For long before the book was written, I said to myself one night that no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which there was no possible access. The puzzle was scarcely propounded ere the solution flew up and the idea lay stored in my mind till, years later, during the silly season, the editor of a popular London evening paper, anxious to let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me to provide him with a more original piece of fiction. I might have refused, but there was murder in my soul, and here was the opportunity. I went to work seriously, though the Morning Post subsequently said the skit was too laboured, and I succeeded at least in exciting my readers, so many of whom sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions during the run of the story that, when it ended, the editor asked me to say something by way of acknowledgement. Thereupon I wrote a letter to the paper, thanking the would-be solvers for their kindly attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus:
To the Editor of The Star.
Sir: Now that The Big Bow Mystery is solved to the satisfaction of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your readers who have favoured him with their kind suggestions and solutions while his tale was running and they were reading? I ask this more especially because great credit is due to them for enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself. When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the murder, but I was determined no one should guess it. Accordingly, as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of the characters got ticked off as innocent—all except one, and I had no option but to make that character the murderer. I was very sorry to do this, as I rather liked that particular person, but when one has such ingenious readers, what can one do? You can’t let anybody boast that he guessed aright, and, in spite of the trouble of altering the plot