1907 thud and blunder. Herbert Wrayson finds a young lady rifling the
desk in his flat. It turns out that she was after the fellow upstairs.
But later that man turns up murdered…
Wrayson, being half in love already, doesn't mention the lady's
presence at the inquest. But that puts him potentially in the wrong if
anyone else saw her, and it appears that someone did.
There's an awful lot of people not explaining things here, and alas it
would make for a rather shorter book if they did. At least two
factions want some papers the dead man had, not to mention his brother
(Oppenheim is at great and repeated pains to let us know that both of
these horrible people are Jewish, and all the good people dislike them
on sight), and while the vaguely awake reader may instantly work out
roughly what's going on, the details will still take some time to
elucidate.
"My client is not actuated in any way by philanthropic motives," Mr.
Bentham said coldly. "To tell you the truth, he does not care
whether the murderer of Morris Barnes is brought to justice or not.
He is only anxious to recover possession of the document of which I
have spoken."
There is never any doubt about who's Good and who's Bad, and we don't
even meet many of the Bad. There's something of an air of smugness
about the business, even while the lady is telling Wrayson that she
can never marry him (or anyone), and he's pressing his suit in a
frankly overbearing way; and while there are three potential femmes
fatales, because they're all on the side of Good there's barely any
vamping from them.
The overall plot makes a certain sense, though I'm not entirely
convinced by the reactions of those with inside knowledge. More
surprising to me is that the action never really gets started; there's
lots of drama and melodrama, but none of the physicality which is
often an important part of a thriller, whether that's actual violence
or just a car chase or an attempt to escape across rough country.
(Buchan, who rather admired Oppenheim's writing, would do better –
helped by not having to churn out two or three books a year for over
half a century.)
I read this on a recommendation, though I can't now remember whose,
and I have to say it's not outstanding. But there is quite a bit of
pleasure to be had here, not to mention plot fragments worth stealing.
Freely available from Project
Gutenberg.
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