The Silent Bullet
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- ¥500
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- ¥500
発行者による作品情報
"It has always seemed strange to me that no one has ever endowed a professorship in criminal science in any of our large universities."
Craig Kennedy laid down his evening paper and filled his pipe with my tobacco. In college we had roomed together, had shared everything, even poverty, and now that Craig was a professor of chemistry and I was on the staff of the Star, we had continued the arrangement. Prosperity found us in a rather neat bachelor apartment on the Heights, not far from the University.
"Why should there be a chair in criminal science?" I remarked argumentatively, settling back in my chair. "I've done my turn at police headquarters reporting, and I can tell you, Craig, it's no place for a college professor. Crime is just crime. And as for dealing with it, the good detective is born and bred to it. College professors for the sociology of the thing, yes; for the detection of it, give me a Byrnes."
"On the contrary," replied Kennedy, his clean-cut features betraying an earnestness which I knew indicated that he was leading up to something important, "there is a distinct place for science in the detection of crime. On the Continent they are far in advance of us in that respect. We are mere children beside a dozen crime-specialists in Paris, whom I could name."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
First published in 1912, this entertaining collection of 12 stories by Reeve (1880–1936) features Craig Kennedy, a New York City university chemistry professor, whose journalist friend and Watsonian narrator, Walter Jameson, recommends his services to the NYPD. In the baffling title tale, a stock broker drops dead in the middle of a business meeting from a gunshot despite no one present seeing a firearm or hearing a shot. "Spontaneous Combustion" is especially clever, offering a logical explanation as to how a man ended up dead in his home, burnt from the waist up, with the only copy of his will missing. Another highlight is "The Terror in the Air," centered on two fatalities during the test of a new flying machine, whose inventor hopes Kennedy can prove his device was sabotaged. Never mind that the characters and puzzles aren't on a par with R. Austin Freeman's Dr. Thorndyke stories from the same era. Those interested in early forensics will want to check this out.
