Back
in 2016, I reviewed The
Floating Body (2015) by Kel
Richards, an Australian journalist and broadcaster, who has been
writing crime-fiction since the early nineties and his latest
undertaking is a series of historical impossible crime novels –
casting C.S. Lewis in the role of both detective and lay theologian.
I commented at the time that the book was a bit of a genre-mutt. A
mutt who was not entirely devoid of charm, but a mutt nonetheless.
Richards
attempted to write a book that was a historical novel, a detective
story, a reminiscence of public school fiction, a Wodehousean homage
and a sermon.
Regrettably,
the result was less than perfect and an anonymous commentator
observed that everything about the book struck him as recycled, "even
the cover is a phony," which is hard to argue against as
Richards was obviously riffing on his pet writers and hobby-horse
subjects (e.g. theology and morality).
However, I promised at the end
of my review to return to this series for a second serving and, at
the time, a fourth book had been announced with a curiously gruesome
murder inside a locked room, but, to be upfront about it, it turned
out to be more of the same – even if the impossible murder had a
novel explanation. But more on that later.
The
Sinister Student (2016) is the fourth book in this series and
takes place in 1936, among the dreaming spires of Oxford, where the
narrator of the series, Tom Morris, returns after a year of absence.
Morris is hoping to secure a position as the leader writer at the
Oxford Mail, but shortly after his arrival he meets his old
mentor, C.S. Lewis, who invites him to a meeting of the Inklings.
A real-life literary discussion club that included J.R.R. Tolkien,
Hugo Dyson, Rev. Adam Fox and Neville Coghill.
All
of them make an appearance in this book and Tolkien even becomes a
supporting character. During their meeting, he even reads the latest
chapter from a book he has been writing, The Hobbit (1937),
which delights all but one person who attended the meeting.
The
Honorable Aubrey Willesden is a high-handed, unlikable student who,
somehow, received an invitation to the meeting, but, to Morris'
shock, Willesden is of the opinion that the circle is "vastly
overrated" and dismisses Tolkien's story as a mere fairy tale,
which has no place in a prestigious university – only in a nursery.
Morris can't believe that anyone, who listened to "the vivid
storytelling in the classic tradition of the great epics,"
could have left the meeting unaffected, but he awakes the following
morning to something even more unbelievable.
A
house scout was asked by Willesden to wake him up that morning, to
catch a train to London, but he can't rouse him and the solid door to
his room was locked from the inside. The door is broken down by two
gardeners and they make a gruesome discovery inside the room.
Willesden
had been "savagely beheaded" and the wound, where his neck
had been, had oozed "a great pool of blood across the floor,"
but the head and murder weapon were miraculously missing from the
room! The only door had not only been locked from the inside, but
bolted as well and the windows had been securely latched. So there
was no way, whatsoever, a murderer could have entered, or left, the
room carrying a severed head and a bloodied weapon. However,
everything at the scene of the crime suggests that's exactly what
happened.
 |
| Written at the time of this case |
A
local policeman, Inspector Fleming, failed to find the head and
immediately handed over the case to Scotland Yard, which brings
Detective Inspector Gideon Crispin and Sergeant Henry Merrivale to
the university. Yes, these two characters aren't exactly, what you
call, a subtle nod at John
Dickson Carr and Edmund
Crispin. And they don't do all that much in the story exact
dragging a nearby river for the head and murder weapon.
There's
also a sub-plot running through the story, known as "The Mystery of
the Missing Milton," concerning a first edition of John Milton's
Paradise Lost (1667), which has gone missing from the Bodleian
Library and the last person who had handled it was Lewis – who is
(unofficially) suspected of being the book thief. This angers his
brother, "Warnie," who's determined to clear his brother's name,
but, in my opinion, this plot-thread is merely filler to pad out the
story. So this is as good a point as to make up the balance between
the good and bad points of the book. I'll start with the bad aspects
of the story.
First
of all, there's the ongoing theological discussion between Lewis (a
Christian) and Morris (an atheist), which are hammered, like
doorstops, into various points of the narrative and this can be
rather awkward as well as annoying. For example, early on in the
story Lewis and Morris are looking out of the window, observing the
line of policemen combing the school lawn for the missing head, when
the former says "ah, yes" we "were talking about the
way in which people die" and "the reason why people die."
And they simply resume their discussion about the sacrifice of Jesus
Christ and the cross. This stop-and-go discussion littered the pages
from beginning to end.
In
my opinion, the book, or rather the whole series, would have been
better served had Richards contained these theological discussions to
a single (long-ish) chapter, somewhere, in the middle of a book –
like a locked room sermon. Unfortunately, I don't believe Richards is
really interested in writing strong Christian-themed mystery novels.
Obviously, he likes the classic detective stories and the locked room
mystery, but my impression is that he sees them as a pulpit to preach
from and this comes at the expense of the plot. And that's, in my
book, an unpardonable sin.
A
second sin is that the story, as a whole, is pretty dull and nothing
of interest really happens until the end, which is quite an
accomplish for a detective story about a brutal decapitation inside a
locked and bolted room. The murderer, along with the motive, is even
presented to the reader on a silver platter and then gets ignored by
everyone until the final chapters. This is not what a good detective
story should be like!
Lastly,
I really began to dislike Morris over the course of this book, who
comes across here as a weak-kneed pushover, which is exemplified in
how he's used by a potential love-interest, the haughty Penelope
Robertson-Smyth, who treats him with a complete lack of respect –
like he's nothing more than a piece of modeling clay who might be
molded in something remotely desirable. It's not until the end, when
she tells him she never wants to see him again, that he finally pulls
himself up by his own spine and whimpers, "I'm over her now."
Morris also never provides any real opposition to Lewis, who lectures
him like a child.
Luckily,
the book was not entirely bad and had some positive aspects. One of
these aspects is that story, like its predecessor, had a good amount
of charm and was very readable, but also appreciated the cryptic clue
Lewis gave to Morris. Lewis told him that, over the years, some of
his students have been adroit and some have been sinister.
Statistically, "most have been adroit" and "only a
minority sinister." Morris was an adroit student and Willesden
was a sinister student. Although, I think Richards should have used
the word dexterous, instead of adroit, this clue was neatly tied to
the solution of the locked room murder.
A
pretty good locked room trick, all things considered, that deserved a
better treatment. One that would have used the arterial gushing of
the neck wound as a clue. The spurt of blood, after the head came
off, would have literally pointed in the direction of the (locked
room) solution, but here I go nitpicking again. So let me tell you
about the one thing I, as a purist, should have hated, but ended up
loving it.
There's
a foreign student at the university, David Bracken, who has an
old-fashioned wardrobe in his room, but this wardrobe has a special
quality that transported the book to the border-region where genres
meet. Admittedly, this element is completely out-of-place in
historical mystery novels, but this part was surprisingly
well-handled and loved the reason why Bracken was present there. Not
everyone is going to like it, but I was pleasantly surprised by it.
I'm
not entirely sure whether I'll be taking a crack at the other titles
in this series, The Country House Murders (2015) and The
Corpse in the Cellar (2015), which are impossible crime novels,
but everything suggests they suffer from the same weaknesses as The
Floating Body and The Sinister Student. So, if I take
another look at this locked room series, it won't be for another year
or two.
So
far this overlong, drag of a review and I'll try to grab something
good from the pile for the next time.
