5/30/18

Wobble to Death (1970) by Peter Lovesey

A year ago, I read the lively A Case of Spirits (1975) and the book was my formal introduction to Peter Lovesey's Victorian-era policemen, Sgt. Cribb and Constable Thackeray, who appeared in only eight historical mystery novels published during the 1970s – which began with Wobble to Death (1970) and ended with Waxwork (1978). I was recently reminded that the first book from this series was still precariously balanced, somewhere, at the top of the big pile. So decided to finally take it off.

John Dickson Carr reviewed Wobble to Death in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and praised Lovesey for his unvarnished depiction of Victorian England ("here are true Victorians, not pious frauds of legend") and described the book as "a first-rate story of sustained thrills," but Carr's endorsement was not the only reason why I wanted to make this one my next stop in the series.

Lovesey has set many of his Sgt. Cribb mysteries against the background of Victorian crazes and entertainment, like spiritualism, but Wobble to Death takes place during a six-day Go-As-You-Please contest – an endurance test for "Proven Pedestrians" also known as Wobbles.

Sir John Astley instituted the endurance contests in March, 1878 and the sport, which even had championship belts, became very popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1880s. George Littlewood set the record of 623.4 miles in Madison Square Gardens (New York) in 1888 and a physiologist described Littlewood's endurance feat in Advancement Science as "probably be about the maximum sustained output of which the human frame is capable." Littlewood's record still stands today.

These six-day endurance contests, or Wobbles, have become an obscure relic of history, but to use it as a backdrop for a historical detective novel had me intrigued.

Wobble to Death is set in 1879 and takes place at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, where promoter Solomon Herriott has organized a Six Day Pedestrian Contest. A footrace in which the competitors have to make "the best of his way on foot," by walking or running, and whoever covers "the greatest distance" in the specified time will be crowned Champion Pedestrian of the World – a title that comes with five-hundred pounds in prize money and a championship belt. This is Endurance Championship Walking (ECW! ECW!! ECW!!!).

There were two classes of competitors and two tracks. On the inner, one-eighth of a mile track moved the Main Eventers, Capt. Erskine Chadwick and Charles Darrell, who were in a two-men race within another race.

The outer, one-seventh of a mile track was reserved for fourteen lesser "heavenly bodies," but the (top) competitors in this second-class of walkers were determined to take a shot at the prize money and title. There's Feargus O'Flaherty, "Half-breed" Williams, Peter "The Scythebearer" Chalk and Billy Reid, but the outer track also has a dark horse. A puny physician, F.H. Mostyn-Smith, who had "the style of an expert in egg-and-spoon racing."

So the six day Go-As-You-Please begins and Lovesey takes his time to set up both the plot and backdrop of the story.

A six day endurance race, set in the late 1800s, is a fascinating and original setting for a detective novel, but Lovesey is not given to romanticizing or decrying the era the story is set in. He simply represents Victorian life as it was at the time. This is most notable in the squalor and even unhygienic living conditions of the lower-ranked pedestrians. The grand Agricultural Hall is filled with fog, gas fumes and the smell of cattle-dung and Herriott is grilled over these conditions by the press, but simply dismisses them by saying that he's not a hotelier and how some of the second-class pedestrians may find it “a pleasurable experience to have any sort of roof above them” – even wagering a bet they would die from "want of exercise" before any of his competitors "dies from taking too much."

On the second day, Darrell collapses on the track and passes away shortly after being taken to his hut. Initially, they believe Darrell, who had walked barefoot with blisters, had contracted tetanus, but a post-mortem reveals there was enough strychnine in his body "to put down a dray-horse." The death of Darrell is followed by that of his personal trainer, Sam Monk, who took his own life by gassing himself in their hut out of remorse. Or so it appears on the surface.

Enter Sgt. Cribb and Constable Thackeray. They conduct their investigation as the race continues and this results in a humorous scene when Thackeray is instructed by Cribb to question Chadwick as he strides along the track, which was greeted with "delighted hoots of derision" from the stands – someone in the crowd even knocked Thackeray's bowler of his head with a well-aimed apple. By this time, Herriott has also dissolved the separate tracks and Chadwick, gentleman pedestrian and champion walker of England, had to walk among the "toughened professionals" of the inner track, which resulted in elbows being buried in his ribs and damaged shins. The gentleman pedestrian began to resemble a battered warhorse.

Sgt. Cribb reasons the solution not from physical clues, inconsistencies in statements or the movement of suspects, but by simply eliminating everyone who could not have done the murders or lacked a motive to do them in. Technically, this can be considered fair play, because there's logic to his reasoning, but this approach made the plot feel rather thin in hindsight. But there was than enough to make up for that.

Regardless, I greatly enjoyed my (brief) time with Wobble to Death. Lovesey wrote a breezily paced, well written and characterized detective novel with an original setting and background that had never been explored before, but the reader is not beaten over the head with historical references to help them remind the story takes place in 1879. This makes the book all the more authentic, which is easier said than done, and demonstrates why the Sgt. Cribb series is so highly regarded in the sub-genre of historical detective fiction. What a pity Lovesey only wrote eight of them.

15 comments:

  1. I have never understood why Lovesey stopped writing the Cribb books, because they are great favorites of mine and I consider them to be superior to the rest of his output. I heard that he stopped writing them because he felt he had grown away from the Victorian period. If so, I guess there is no help for it. I remember that Robert E. Howard felt that his characters were standing over his shoulder dictating their stories to him, but then they would go away and he could not write about them any more. On the other hand, Donald Westlake quit writing Parker books for 20 years and went back to them, so maybe one day Lovesey will go back to Cribb.

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    1. It would be great if Lovesey decided to take Sgt. Cribb out of mothballs. Even if it was only for a one-off return. Until that happens, I still have six unread titles in this series to look forward to. :)

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    2. Peter said he couldn't think of Cribb as anyone but Alan Dobie after the series, which is the same complaint PD James made about the Cordelia Gray series. So blame television!

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    3. Why would a mental image of Alan Dobie as Sgt. Cribb prevent Lovesey from writing more books about him? If I remember correctly, Appie Baantjer also had his image of Inspector De Cock obliterated by Piet Römer's performance in the TV-series, but that didn't prevent him from writing twenty, or so, more of them. So, no, I'm afraid we can't accept that excuse. Lovesey has to bring back Cribb. :)

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  2. As I have said, I think that Waxwork is not only the best of the Cribbs, it is easily the best of them. It is in my top 20 of the greatest detective novels. Youtube also has the TV version, which is also superb.

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    1. Waxwork is going to be my next stop in the series.

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    2. Waxwork is very good but noticeably more grim. Peter doesn't hold back on the unpleasantness of the Victorian penal system!

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    3. Justice was swift in those days, wasn't it?

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  3. Thanks for the review. This was the only Cribb novel I’ve read, and like the other works by Lovesey I found it slightly longer and more padded than the puzzle demanded. Though to be fair I feel that more acutely for the Diamond novels; my recollection suggests that “Wobble” was only slightly longer than a typical GA novel.

    Perhaps I should give Cribb another go - either “Case of Spirits” or “Swing Together” that Puzzle Doctor reviewed favourably recently.

    Or maybe I should just curl up in a couch and read the last two manga volumes featuring Kindaichi as a teenager - in anticipation of the first volume featuring him in his mid-30s being released in a few months’ time!

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    1. Yes, I would say Wobble ran slightly longer than the average GA mystery. I don't know if you would like A Case of Spirits more than Wobble, but I liked it. Maybe you should just go with Kindaichi for now.

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    2. Would you say “Spirits” is superior to “Wobble”?

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    3. Yes, I would say Spirits is definitely better than Wobble.

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    4. This gives me some hope then! For some reason my local library stocks all Cribb novels apart from “Spirits” - and so I borrowed “Waxwork” instead

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  4. I'm always a bit cautious about historical detective fiction, and indeed historical fiction in general. It's just about impossible to capture the authentic spirit of another age. All too often you end up with contemporary characters in historical drag. And I'm particularly suspicious of modern attempts at Victorian settings - it seems that it brings out the worst in most writers.

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    1. I don't think you can really capture the authentic spirit of another, long-ago age that you were not apart of, but you can try to accurately reconstruct that period and how good that reconstruction is depends on your knowledge, impartiality and honesty. And those last two is where modern writers tend to slip up, because they bring baggage from our time back into the past. What you end up with is contemporary characters in historical drag. Even Paul Doherty has been guilty of this with some of his lead-characters.

      Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee series is a great of example of how to accurately reconstruct the ancient past in fiction.

      I think the Sgt. Cribb series doesn't score too poorly on the list of good, accurate historical (detective) fiction. And, for what it's worth, Carr praised Wobble for its honest depiction of the Victorians.

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