Audiobook · read by volunteers
Big Bow Mystery
Israel Zangwill (1864–1926)
Read by Adrian Praetzellis · 12 chapters · 5 h 05
About the book
It is a cold, foggy night in London, and in a lodging house a man has been found dead in his bedroom, the door locked and bolted on the inside. Nobody could have got in, and nobody could have got out. Scotland Yard is baffled. The newspapers are excited. And two rival investigators, with very different ideas of what detection means, set about trying to solve a crime that looks impossible. Israel Zangwill’s novel is one of the earliest and most celebrated locked-room mysteries, and it is also a very funny book, with a satirical eye on the press, the police and the self-confidence of experts. The solution, as one character says, is sublimely simple, and the last chapter delivers it with style. Twelve recordings, just over five hours, for lovers of clever puzzles.
Introduction
Israel Zangwill (1864-1926) was an English writer, well known in his time as a novelist, playwright and public figure. The Big Bow Mystery was published in 1891, a few years after the first Sherlock Holmes stories had begun to appear, and it is generally regarded as a landmark in the development of the detective novel. It is one of the first full-length examples of the locked-room puzzle, in which a crime appears to have been committed in a space that nobody could have entered.
What sets the book apart from many of its successors is its comic tone. Zangwill uses the form to make fun of the people who surround a murder case: the reporters, the amateur theorists, the officials and the detectives who are sure they are right. The plot is tightly built, and the cleverness lies in the way the facts are presented to the reader, who is given every chance to find the answer.
The recording has twelve chapters and lasts a little over five hours. It was read by a LibriVox volunteer. The experience is best enjoyed without any prior knowledge of how the puzzle is resolved.
If you enjoy classic mysteries, Victorian London and wit with an edge, this is a lively choice, and it shows how much invention was already present in the earliest days of the genre. Part of the pleasure of the book is that its humour and its puzzle work together, so that even a listener who guesses the answer can enjoy how it is delivered. The chapters are short and end on turns that make it easy to keep listening.
Public domain
Israel Zangwill died in 1926: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text