The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories

Rating:
Summary: Exceedingly Good Stories - Dr. Thorndyke Rivals Holmes
Review: I highly recommend this Dover reprint, The Best Dr. Thorndyke Detective Stories by R. Austin Freeman. The stories of Dr. Thorndyke, a medical doctor and forensic scientist, were published contemporaneously with those of Sherlock Holmes. I am surprised and puzzled that Dr. Thorndyke's mysteries have remained hidden in the shadow of Sherlock Holmes for all these years. These stories were really quite good.

R. Austin Freeman was an amazingly innovative author, credited as the father of the scientific detective story and also, the inventor of the inverted detective story. Amazingly, Freeman built every device and tested every chemical procedure used by Dr. Thorndyke to ensure their authenticity. In many cases his techniques were subsequently emulated by early police laboratories.

The inverted mystery, later made famous by the popular Columbo TV series, allows the reader to witness the careful planning and execution of what appears to be a perfect murder, before the detective even arrives on the scene. Dr. Thorndyke, like Columbo many years later, tugs at loose threads, eventually unraveling the so-called perfect murder.

The first three stories - The Case of Oscar Brodski, A Case of Premeditation, and The Echo of a Mutiny - are exceptional examples of inverted mysteries. Not only did Freeman develop this new genre, his inverted detective stories are amazingly good tales that have seldom been matched by later authors.

The Mandarin's Pearl, The Blue Sequin, The Moabite Cipher, and The Aluminium Dagger are more conventional stories, but ones with more emphasis on forensic techniques than found in Watson's accounts of Sherlock Holmes. The final story, 31 New Inn, is substantially longer than the others and involves two intertwined mysteries. It is a remarkably good story.

Freeman as Clifford Ashdown: Earlier in his writing career, R. Austin Freeman, using the pseudonym Clifford Ashdown, collaborated with a Dr. James Pitcairn in creating a series of stories involving a less-than-honest private investigator, Romney Pringle. I found two Pringle stories in an anthology titled The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes (edited by Hugh Greene).