Review: Guilty Bonds

Guilty Bonds by William Le Queux
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So, there are different levels of "plot relies on coincidence."

Often, when I tag a book that way, I'm referring to one or two coincidences. This book... this book has at least eight, without any one of which the plot would not work. In its defense, it's from 1891, and running your plot on coincidence was more acceptable then. Still, even if you call it "fate," it's pretty obviously the author putting his hand on the scale instead of having the main character drive the plot with protagonism.

Not that he really could, because he doesn't have a clue what's going on until people tell him at the end. Despite his vow to find the murderer of the woman who (in the first of those many coincidences) he discovered dead in a random house while walking home late at night from his club, he makes no real effort to do so; I've tagged it "not-solved-by-detective," but he isn't really a detective at all, and nor is anyone else who plays any significant role. That tag is mainly indicating that the solution is told to the main character, and the reader, at the end.

The plot is mostly just a series of things that happen to him. He makes very few decisions, and most of the decisions he does make are ill-considered and get him into more trouble.

For example. Say you've happened to meet a mysterious young Russian woman in Italy, and she won't tell you anything about her past, and you've only known her a few days, but you loooove her desperately. Do you:

a) Agree to smuggle a sealed box, which she says contains her jewels, into St Petersburg for her?
b) When mysteriously arrested, imprisoned without trial, exiled to Siberia, and barely rescued thanks to three more coincidences, go back to England, bump into her again at the theatre, and end up marrying her, despite your well-justified suspicion that she used you as a patsy at the risk of your life, and the fact that she says she's very sorry, but she can't explain?
c) Both of the above?

Yes, Frank (the MC) picks option c.

It's melodramatic. It's implausible. It's rife with coincidence. It's heavily dependent on bad decisions by the main character. And the final explanation doesn't stack up. (view spoiler)[Vera, the ironically named Russian woman who spends almost the whole book not telling Frank the truth, is seeking vengeance for her father, executed by the Czar after a rigged trial for something he didn't do; in pursuit of this goal, she has joined the Nihilists, and sworn to assist in three attempts on the tyrant's life. If she fails three times, she's released from her vow and can talk about it, even though the Nihilists eliminate anyone who talks about them with extreme prejudice, something that drives a significant portion of the plot. (This apparently doesn't apply once your vow is fulfilled and you leave the group, though.) When the third attempt fails, she expresses relief that it's failed, apparently having got over her anger about her father and just wanting to move on. (hide spoiler)]

The Project Gutenberg edition has a few errors in it, some of which may be scan issues (like the question marks that should be exclamation marks and vice versa), others of which, like the dangling modifiers and missing past perfect tense, are no doubt in the original. I thought missing past perfect was purely a modern issue, but apparently not.

All up, it falls short of the minimum standard for a recommendation from me, even a qualified one.

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