The Passenger from Scotland Yard by H. Freeman Wood
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
The opening chapters feature the shenanigans on the overnight mail train to Dover and the crossing of the English Channel. Wood deliberately obscures what the five passengers are up to so we readers stay on guard. After a killing comes out of the blue, we wonder if the book will focus on the murder or the diamond theft.
Reading an early mystery, I had prepared myself for Victorian verboseness and digressions. I was pleasantly surprised by the tightly constructed plot. The characterization of the Scotland Yard man Byde, the fence Grandpa, the pickpocket Bat, and his vicious mentor St. John held my rapt attention. Only mildly stagey and wordy, the intricate and subtle conversations were enjoyable to read. The author feels affectionate toward Byde’s touching belief in education, especially the use of Euclidean geometry to consider and eliminate suspects. Mathematics fans will like Wood’s implicit assertion that training in math fosters clear thinking, a skill and habit that can be transferred to other areas of life.
The evocation of traveling by train in the 1880s is not the only effective period re-creation in the novel. Wood must have lived in Paris during that time because his believable descriptions of the people and places are full of life. Back then, when the cops were unable to identify a corpse, they would expose the remains at the morgue near Notre Dame so that worried friends and relative and perhaps curiosity-seekers and tourists too could stroll by and recognize the departed. I find descriptions like this most worthy tangents:
“Passing to the rear of the cathedral, and skirting the little gardens which there lie, the inspector and his companions saw that groups of idlers had already congregated in front of the Morgue. Persons were also approaching from the bridges on both sides, and others were ascending the two or three steps at the entrance to the building. Visitors who had satisfied their curiosity lounged through the doorway, and down the steps, and augmented the knots of debaters scattered along the pavement. Some of the women and children were cracking nuts and eating sweetmeats, purchased from itinerant vendors who had stationed their barrows at the side of the road. One hawker was endeavouring to sell bootlaces; another was enumerating the titles of the comic songs which he exhibited in cheap leaflets, strung together on a wooden frame.”Just wonderful. In the midst of life, there is death, but in the face of death life rocks and rolls, cracking nuts and putting up song sheets on wooden frames. Fin-de-Siecle Paris I add to my list of places that would have been cool to have lived in.
In the introduction to the Dover edition released in 1977, editor E.F. Bleiler, whose job was to distinguish trash and treasure, considers The Passenger from Scotland Yard to be the best detective novel published between The Moonstone (1866) by Wilkie Collins and The Hounds of Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902).
Tags: Book Recommendations, Book Reviews, Book Suggestions, Mystery
I don’t know if this is the best book of the period, or even Wood’s best, but it’s certainly his most well known. Fortunately for readers who want more of his work, most of his books are available as downloads from Many Books, Gutenberg and the other usual suspects. In the current work, I enjoyed his predilection for advanced mathematics and his confidence even when confronted by the standard (for the time) French arrogance.
I love reading about things from this era. My father was a medic in World War II mostly in France. He was there when they liberated a couple of the concentration camps. I wish he would have been able to talk about the time he was there. But he never would. Maybe that’s why I love reading about some of this. It brings me closer to him.
oops meant my comment for the midwife book, not this one – sorry
I enjoy reading historical mysteries and would love to win this book.
Thank you for reviewing this book. I do so enjoy the older British mysteries and your reviews always help me to decide if I would like the book and have lead me to some new authors.
Well, it’s Friday. Am I too late for this fabulous title?