Review: Not one of the better Thorndykes
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 12 10, 2012
While the Dr. Thorndyke series is pretty obviously a Sherlock Holmes take off, that's OK, when they work. I do find myself thinking "Again? Does everyone in the book except Thorndyke have to be a blustering idiot?" But so it goes.There are some I like and some that I just get through and I've realized that what makes the difference is the narrator.It takes a while to realize it, but Thorndyke as a character really plays a fairly minor role in these mysteries. He seems like the central character but he is always just observed (ala the Holmes series) and we are never privy to his thoughts, except when he voices them, though they are all first-person narratives.And there lies the rub: If I like the narrator, I enjoy the story, and if not, I don't. The first several I read had Dr Jervis as the narrator and I liked him. But then there was the one who was another young doctor in love, and he was simpering beyond belief, as though Freeman just doesn't know how to portray men interested in women without making them cloying.This story seems to me the weakest, for a couple of reasons. First, once again the narrator falls in love and simpers, which is especially unattractive in a male. Then, to follow the "everyone but Thorndyke is an idiot" motif, this time the narrator is the lawyer who always acts for Thorndyke and has for years, and thus there's no reason for him to respond to the way everyone else does to Thorndyke's near-omniscience. But true to form, this one, Anstey, is as dense both in general, and about Thorndyke, as the rest.I use these as subway reading, but if they cost more than a buck or two, I'd toss them.