The Big Bow Mystery
Publisher Description
A good early locked room mystery, written in a very humorous, satirical style. On a foggy day in the Big Bow District of London, Mrs. Drabdump becomes fearful for her lodger. She knocks several times at his door but no answer. She runs to Inspector Grodman and together they break down his door to find the pooor man lying in his bed with his throat cut. The door was locked from the inside. Thus begins Israel Zangwill's classic mystery.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Whodunit fans who prefer their murders mysteriously committed behind locked doors will appreciate this reissue of the first impossible crime novel, penned by the unlikely Zangwill (1864-1926)-better known during his lifetime as an ardent British Zionist-in the late 1890s. Widowed landlady Mrs. Drabdump and retired Scotland Yarder Grodman batter down a secured and bolted bedroom door to find Arthur Constant, a hero of the working classes, dead from a cut throat. After suicide is quickly ruled out, the puzzle captures the city's imagination, with theory after theory (some poking fun at Poe's solution to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") floated in the press, until Grodman himself returns to the lists to try to clear the man condemned to death for the crime. The plot device has been used many times since, but Zangwill deserves credit for inventing it and enlisting it in an entertaining and timeless plot. With a sardonic style and vivid, Dickensian characterizations of Victoria-era London, Zangwill still appeals to contemporary readers.
