Customer Reviews

Mr. Pottermack's Oversight

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4 star:		(1)
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Probably my favorite of the Thorndyke novels. This one is truly superb in every way! It's a classic example of Freeman's "inverse" mystery style...where we first see the crime as it occurs, then watch Thorndyke investigate it. As with all of the Thorndyke books, it's a period piece, very much set in its era (early 20th century). Austin Freeman, via Thorndyke, pretty much invented scientific "Crime Scene Investigation". By current standards, the science can sometimes be dated, and the pace of the novels much more leisurely than any mystery of our own era. These are not contemporary thrillers. But, Freeman's use of language is truly remarkable. He is easily one of the most gifted mystery writers I've ever found, old or new. Simply put, Freeman was a *great* writer! This novel, in particular, will not disappoint.

Richard Austin Freeman introduced the world to the "inverted detective story." From the beginning, the reader knows "who done it," and the fun is finding out whether the perpetrator will be caught.

In this novel, the sympathetic, engaging and enterprising Mr. Pottermack commits the perfect crime, only to discover that a perfect crime is the last thing in the world he wants. Then Mr. Pottermack comes up against the legendary Dr. John Thorndyke, physician and lawyer, the dean of scientific detection, who seems to know far too much about what Mr. Pottermack did on a night when there was nobody around to see him. Will Dr. Thorndyke celebrate another triumph? Or will Mr. Pottermack avoid detection and finally find happiness? It's worth the read to find out!

I am a great fan of R. Austin Freeman. As many people know, Freeman invented the "inverted" detective story in which -- as in the Columbo TV series -- the murder takes place at the beginning of the story and the chief interest then becomes the detective's homing in on the person the reader knows to be guilty. Although Freeman argues in his introduction to "The Singing Bone," his collection of inverted short stories, that this approach is some ways superior to the conventional approach, he didn't actually use it very often. I believe this is one of only two novels in which he employed it. Overall, this is an excellent story, well paced and showing Thorndyke at his best. It has some drawbacks, however. The scientific analysis that Thorndyke employs can often be a bit far-fetched, maybe never more so than in this story. The means by which Thorndyke is put on the trail of Pottermack is quite implausible. Which is to say, the chances that Pottermack's "oversight" would have caused his crime to be detected are about 1,000,000 to 1. Nevertheless, anyone who likes classic British mysteries should find this novel to be very enjoyable.