The Eames-Erskine Case: A Chief Inspector Pointer Mystery by A.E. FieldingMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A twisty tale of hidden identities and complicated schemes.
Even though the chief inspector isn't described all that much and doesn't have much in the way of personal traits, he still feels significantly more individual than the interchangeable inspectors of Freeman Wills Crofts, showing that it doesn't take very much work to turn a cardboard cutout into something a bit more like a character. He has a flatmate, who he uses as a sounding board, and this alone - the fact that he has a domestic life and talks to someone who isn't a suspect or a witness - goes a long way to humanize him, even though the flatmate isn't anything like a Watson, playing no role in the actual plot.
The unfortunate thing is that we don't get to follow the detective all the way through the case. Partway through, the viewpoint switches to a young woman who is asked to act as an amateur detective/undercover spy to help clear her potential fiancé of the crime, and while we get some exciting action as a result, a lot of the detective's work is done off-screen and then sprung on us (via the woman) as an infodump of sorts. This makes for a less satisfactory ending than if we'd been able to follow along and have some chance of figuring out the solution for ourselves, since, as they say in court, it relies on facts not in evidence.
Still, it's a sound piece of work in other respects, and I'll try to get hold of others in the series. Unfortunately, at time of review this is the only one that's on Project Gutenberg.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment