Review: The Corbin Necklace

The Corbin Necklace by Henry Kitchell Webster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A family of rich Midwesterners (their grandfather came in and, someone actually says aloud, chased the Indians off a bunch of land and took it) are preparing for a wedding. The grandmother, still alive at an advanced age, is rumoured to be planning to give an heirloom pearl necklace to the young bride as a wedding gift. The young woman doesn't particularly want it, and in fact doesn't particularly want the groom, either, as it turns out, but feels obligated to accept both, for reasons which unfold.

There's a big coincidence at the heart of the plot, but since it's more to set things up than to resolve them I don't mind as much as I otherwise would. The pearl necklace is a classic McGuffin, and both it and its less-valuable duplicate disappear, reappear, and are generally complication and suspicion generators throughout.

The bride's name is Judy, and her younger brother is consequently known to one and all as Punch, though he's officially John Corbin III. He's a clever, loyal and courageous 13-year-old, who takes his responsibilities seriously, and considers preventing the theft of the necklace to be one of them. He's effective, too.

The family's neighbour, never named, is the narrator, mostly an observer of the action because of a broken leg, though he does facilitate a few conversations. There's an older man who seems to have a past as some sort of law enforcement agent, who takes effective action as well, and is one of those characters that you'd like to hear more stories about. (As far as I know, though, there were not any.)

The groom is, without being malicious or villainous, still thoroughly despicable in his adherence to his background's assumptions about what he's owed and who it's right to inconvenience so that he gets it. It's a relief to everyone when he finally departs. Meanwhile, the tyrannical old lady is more flexible and fair-minded than you might expect.

It's a genial mystery in which there are no murders and no police, and all of the characters are distinct, believable, and the possessors of some depth. The author was a prolific producer of fiction, who said once that to make a living from fiction you had to churn out a lot of possibly inferior stuff, but this is decent, by the standards of the time and of today.

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