Adventures of Inspector Lestrade

Review: Once in a while there appears a book that all Sherlockians must purchase, whatever the cost. Unfortunately, this is not one of them. Its style and plot are apparently the result of a head-on collision between Spike Milligan and Agatha Christie. The humour is the kind that only Milligan carries off well:
   “Virgo intacta?” asked Bandicoot.
   “I don't see their birth sign has much to do with it” commented Dixon sagely.’

Mr. Trow has apparently misheard Raymond Chandler’s maxim as “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a pun in his mouth”.

The plot - if a story involving eleven murders requires a plot - owes much to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and The ABC Murders, but relies principally on fast-paced action to carry the reader onward. The net result, however, is that belief is not so much suspended as hanged, drawn, and quartered.

Time and the law of libel have made it possible to mingle real and fictitious characters in this way - they all play Ragtime, so to speak - and in the mad rush from one end of England to the other the reader meets Tennyson, Alma-Tadema, Oscar Wilde, Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, John H. Watson, the Duke of Clarence, and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The atmosphere is one of farce, through which Inspector Lestrade (Why "Sholto", Mr.Trow, when his initial is “G.”?) moves relatively undisturbed, the straight man to a collection of black and white comedians. I was continually reminded of Michael Bond’s ex-Inspector Pamplemousse, a human Paddington Bear in his generation of disasters major and minor.

Mr. Trow may perhaps argue that his book is a light-hearted romp, and should not be treated seriously. He can, with justification, shelter under the mantle of Conan Doyle himself, as well as that of other writers of 'historical novels', in his mingling of fact and fiction. But I would recommend that he read Jacques Barzun’s Decalogue for Pasticheurs in Michael Harrison’s festschrift Beyond Baker Street (1975), and follow Conan Doyle's advice to a would-be pasticheur: “Use your own characters!”.

In addition to well-nigh drowning in the flood of reality in character, we also learn the truth about the Reichenbach, and the identity of Jack the Ripper. We are introduced to various ingenious methods of murder, my favourite being the fate of a modern-day Actaeon who is eaten because he said "Harrow” (the only joke Mr. Trow has not emphasised, no doubt for excellent reasons). Much of this thrashing about could be forgiven in a first novel; a novice writer has to learn the trade somehow. But in the classic villain-detective confrontation in the last chapter, we discover that the first murder - the reason for Lestrade's involvement - is totally unconnected with the others. Not even the villain knows whodunit, and unless Mr. Trow writes a sequel - which God forbid - neither will we. I regret to say that when I reached this point in the farrago I would cheerfully have murdered Mr. Trow myself, and would have expected the thanks of the Court for doing so.

In A Case of Identity, Holmes remarks that James Windibank “will rise from crime to crime, until he does something very bad”. I regret to say that, in my opinion, Mr. Trow has begun where James Windibank was expected to leave off.

Reviewed by: Peter H. Wood M.Bt., B.S.I., [Appeared first in Canadian Holmes]