Review: The Achievements of Luther Trant

The Achievements of Luther Trant by William MacHarg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Something different: An early (1910) presentation of a detective using psychological science to solve cases.

Unfortunately, much of the psychological science of 1910 is bunk, and those parts of it that are valid are badly oversold. For example, the authors take it for granted that anyone who's lying will be stressed, and therefore detectable using early predecessors of the polygraph. There's a reason that polygraph evidence isn't accepted in courts: it's not that simple, not that clearcut, and not that reliable.

It reminds me, in fact, of every overhyped technology ever (such as AI today), which, when you actually start trying to apply it, comes up against the fact that the real world - and particularly the human part of it - is a lot more complicated than the technology evangelists have allowed for.

It's not all polygraph; in fact, there's quite a lot of variation, and no two stories use exactly the same method. There's some stuff about "hysteria" that, I think, takes a few laboratory experiments that were probably exaggerated in their writeup and interpretation, and turns them into "known facts" that apply generally. In one chapter, the detective solves a case based on giving a brief word-association test to a group of bank employees. In another, he measures the speed of response in a word-association test using an elaborate apparatus (all the scientific instruments are mechanical or electro-mechanical, in this time before electronics) in order to discover the guilty party. The response speeds quoted seem extremely slow for what is supposed to be a "word you first think of" test, and could easily be distinguished without using a clock accurate to a tenth of a second. We also don't ever get a discussion of how this young man, who's implied to be off a Midwestern farm, can afford to set himself up with all this presumably expensive precision equipment (once he leaves the university and goes out on his own, that is).

The whole thing takes psychological effects which, if real at all, are probably only visible in a large-scale statistical analysis, and makes them act like universal laws that apply to every subject every time, and can be easily and quickly measured outside a lab setting.

So, treat it as science fiction. But the mysteries are clever, and it's not just the same thing over and over; each story in the book presents a different type of puzzle and a different type of solution, so points to the authors for that.

There is generally a young woman in each story, but she's always engaged or married to someone already, and Trant - young, handsome and athletic as well as highly intelligent - never has a romantic interest. He is, like most early detectives, more of a crime-solving plot device than a character with his own life and interests outside detection. But if you enjoy a clever puzzle, and can suspend disbelief about the "psychological science," it's an enjoyable collection.

View all my reviews