Review: The Problem Club

The Problem Club by Barry Pain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amusing and different. Club stories were almost as much a staple of English literature as clubs were of London life at one time, though this isn't a club in the Drones Club sense (with its own premises), but more like a supper club that meets each month in the private rooms of a restaurant. The members compete in quirky challenges like "who can steal the most handkerchiefs from other club members?" or "try to get someone to say to you, 'You ought to have been a giraffe'." It bears some similarities to G.K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades .

The format of each story is the same. The month's challenge is announced (as a formal reminder) by the chairman, a rotating office among the twelve members, so each member is chairman once a year. The chairman doesn't compete, but adjudicates who among the other members has won. Most of the club subscription goes into a pool, which is taken by the winner or winners.

The chairman then goes around asking the members whether they have completed the challenge. It's all done on the honour system; these are pukka Englishmen, and while they might not blink at manipulating people (harmlessly) or bending the law a bit to complete the challenges, they would naturally never lie about whether they had won. Most of the entertainment value comes from the oddness of the challenges, the discomfiture of the non-winners and their unsuccessful attempts, and the ingenuity of the winners (though at least one winner is a winner by pure luck). Some people attempt to argue that they have won by a technicality involving the precise wording of the rules, and the chairman adjudicates. Once the prize is awarded (or not, if nobody has won; the prize is then added to the next month's pool), the next month's challenge is announced. The meeting then breaks up, and some members play bridge or otherwise socialise amongst themselves. Within this format, the stories are varied; different people, with different specialty knowledge or skills, stand out in each competition, the challenges are diverse, and the solutions even more so.

If you enjoy heist stories for the ingenuity of the plans and the ability of the characters to manipulate, this may be something you'd enjoy too. It's all good fun, nobody is harmed, and some of the club members set out to be clever and end up looking ridiculous.

Even though I found it amusing rather than hilarious, it was entertaining, and original and different enough that I've placed it in the Silver tier of my annual recommendation list. A lot of what I read is, inevitably, changes rung on old concepts, and this, despite being more than a century old, struck me as fresh and with further potential for development.

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