Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes, by R. Austin Freeman
The impossibly insightful detective is, of course, a staple of the mystery genre, with Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation being the archetype, though the lineage runs back to Poe’s “tales of ratiocination” in which the mental magic is performed by C. Auguste Dupin. Such a superhuman investigator always manages to combine eidetic memory and near-perfect perception and apperception with the ability to retrieve from an encyclopædic knowledge of facts legal, scientific, sociological, and trivial just those items of moment which have salience to the particular case being investigated. And the medico cum lawyer Dr. John Thorndyke is a fairly famous exemplar of such a masterful detective, created by the writer R. Austin Freeman over a hundred years ago, in 1907, while Conan Doyle was still maundering his creation through the post-resurrection tales which are problematic to many Holmesians (or Sherlockians, à votre goût). Combining medical knowledge with a fine legal mind, Thorndyke also brings to bear a distinctly scientific bent to each problem, aided by his ever-faithful assistant, Polton. Many recognize R. Austin Freeman as the creator of perhaps the first ‘scientific’ investigator of crime, the progenitor of that lineage which ended up in the CSI franchise.
Mr. Freeman also claimed credit for what he called the ‘inverted’ mystery story, which TV viewers of an earlier age will recognize as ‘what they did on Columbo‘, that is, where the actual crime is detailed up front, and the detective story arises from the actions taken by the investigator to unmask the criminal, already known to the reader/viewer. Generally, in his writing, Freeman plays fair with the reader, though he uses one or two tricks of the trade to hide his ‘clues’ in plain sight. For example, he will use the most arcane scientific jargon to describe a substance, trusting that few of his readers will know the abstruse term. (He lived blissfully unaware of the Internet’s power to make the recondite a mere excuse for endless Wikipedia Talk: pages.) Another peculiarity of the author is to always cast events not including his detective into a neutral omniscient third person narrative, while Dr. Thorndyke’s actions are always related by his amanuensis, the easily puzzled Jervis, a lawyer working in the same rooms as the detective. In either voice, Freeman writes with urbane and dry wit, if not always with humor.
“Yes,” said the constable, closing his note book, “he seems to have been a good deal like other people. They usually are. That’s the worst of it. If people who commit crimes would only be a bit more striking in their appearance and show a little originality in the way they dress, it would make things so much more simple for us.”
Even the Bobby on the street takes time to dryly note the monotonous dullness of the criminal type, perhaps made less noticeable by the extraordinary detectives pursuing them
The plot of Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes is fairly complex, fairly difficult to briefly recap, and perhaps best left for the reader to take as it comes. My own edition (an A. L. Burt reprint of the 1933 original published by Dodd, Mead) includes a précis on the page before the frontispiece which manages paradoxically both a) to give away much of the plot, and b) to misstate egregiously the plot (in spirit if not in detail). I thus read the mystery waiting for certain facts revealed in that ‘flapple’ (as my mother always called that material usually presented on the flaps of a book’s dust jacket) while struggling to follow the ins and outs of the actual narrative. Put very simply, for those who must be told what a book is about before reading a book to discover what the book is about, an American goes to England to assert a claim to a peerage, becomes a witness to a strange contretemps in a luggage room, engages a somewhat shady solicitor to advance his case, which case involves Dr. Thorndyke as a potential legal expert, and from that point the tightly wound up plot begins to spin in various epicycles that would have delighted Ptolemy, though different readers may have different reactions. This reader enjoyed it, though it’s a bit of a muddle at points. It seemed like the author sketched out his idea for the crimes he was to relate, and then found it fairly tricky to reveal them to the reader without just saying, “and this odd thing happened as well, which meant that that guy I mentioned had to do this other thing, which meant …”, etc., etc. There are at least four ‘mysteries’ intersecting within the pages of Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes, and though the intersection leads in some entertaining directions, perhaps one less plot line would have done the book some good, just as L.A Confidential was helped in its transition to the movie screen by dropping one of its threads.
Fans of Holmes may find they also enjoy Dr. Thorndyke, particularly if they enjoy the former’s pedantic recitation of facts, supercilious disdain of expressing opinions in the face of the unknown, and gleeful and arrogant superiority. Unlike Doyle’s creation, however, Dr. Thorndyke is not averse to spinning out theories of the case before all the facts are in, which is sometimes helpful and sometimes distracting to the (or this) reader. Thorndyke is a precise and legalistic speaker, and so will never speak of something as a verity in the absence of facts, but can go on for some time about hypotheticals. I was surprised a tad by this, as it is unclear who if anyone is paying Dr. Thorndyke for his services in this case, and I have met few lawyers willing to expound at length without an assured client to whom to invoice their billable hours. Perhaps things were different in 1921, when this book is set.
Another thing different a century ago comes across in the distinct class consciousness present in this work. Those who cannot stomach an almost innate belief in the ineluctable superiority of certain people due solely to accidents of their birth will find much to annoy them in Dr. Thorndyke Intervenes. To the reader of mysteries, much is too readily revealed when the good guys always wear white hats and the bad guys wear black, or, as is the case here, the good people are whiter than white with their fine character supposedly shown by every chiseled line of their faces.
Mistress Jenifer would have sustained the character of the earl’s daughter with credit even on the stage, where the demands are a good deal more exacting than in real life. In the typically “patrician” style of features, with the fine Roman nose and the level brows and firm chin, she resembled her redoubtable aunt; but she had the advantage of that lady in the matter of stature, being, like her father, well above the average height. And here it may be noted that, if the daughter reflected credit on the father, the latter was well able to hold his position on his own merits. Christopher J. Pippet was fully worthy of his distinguished womenkind; a fine, upstanding gentleman with an undeniable “presence.”
It was probably the possession of these personal advantages that made the way smooth for the two strangers on their arrival at the premises in which the inquest was to be held. At any rate, as soon as Mr. Pippet had made known his connexion with the case, the officiating police officer conducted them to a place in the front row
R. Austin Freeman knows very well the difference between patricians and plebeians, and I’m sure would be surprised that we don’t see it so clearly
So the novel, while engaging, has drawbacks which may prove insuperable for some readers. One issue I have not mentioned, as it may be a positive, a negative, or entirely neutral depending on one’s taste, is that much of the book takes place in various British courts, so that several whole chapters are filled with lawyers (sorry, barristers) and judges and witnesses going on in a very British legal way about this, and then that, and then one other thing. So the reader will learn some trifles about English law as it appeared last century between the wars. I also learned many other things besides the rules of inheritance and peers, such as peculiarities of the geology of southeastern England, scientific properties of dust, and the unexpected behavior of certain metals in specific chemical circumstances. Certainly the work is engaging enough, surprisingly so for a novel filled with a fair amount of pedantic prattling from puffed-up proponents of the patriarchy (not all of whom are characters in the book). However, I am not convinced by this first Dr. Thorndyke novel that I’ve read of his high place in the Pantheon of Detectives. (I have only read short stories featuring this earliest forensic detective heretofore.) I will essay another, perhaps earlier, book or two before I pass judgment.