The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Big Bow Mystery, by I. Zangwill

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Title: The Big Bow Mystery

Author: I. Zangwill

Release Date: February 23, 2009 [EBook #28164]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Big Bow Mystery

By I. Zangwill

Chicago and New York
Rand, McNally & Company

Copyright, 1895, by Rand, McNally & Co.

[Illustration: "My God!" he cried.]

INTRODUCTION.

OF MURDERS AND MYSTERIES.

As this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to
review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is
naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got
into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or
favor. "The Big Bow Mystery" seems to me an excellent murder story, as
murder stories go, for, while as sensational as the most of them, it
contains more humor and character creation than the best. Indeed, the
humor is too abundant. Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There
should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages
to create. Humor is out of tone; it would be more artistic to preserve a
somber note throughout. But I was a realist in those days, and in real
life mysteries occur to real persons with their individual humors, and
mysterious circumstances are apt to be complicated by comic. The
indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and
unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer's solution should
satisfy. Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough till the denouement
is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been
robbed of his breath under false pretenses. And not only must the
solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the
story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new
circumstance upon his rea