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A review by robinwalter
Exit Sir John by Brian Flynn
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
One of Deborah Crombie's Kincaid and James series of detective novels is built around the persistence and growth of anti-Semitism in the UK during and immediately after World War II. I was reminded of that book by this one. Published in 1947, right from the start of the book it seemed to be so overtly anti-Semitic that I finished it not as a whodunnit but simply to find out if the Jew done it. The creepy fixation on Jewishness comes across as Flynn's fixation, not his characters'. An excellent example being this passage:
Ebenezer Isaacs immediately suggested a tall and much more robust Benjamin Disraeli, one-time Earl of Beaconsfield. He was spare, it is true, but he looked strong and healthy. He was a Jew—there was no doubt about that. His eyes and his nose gave the greatest evidences of that. The eyes were dark-set and restless, and the nose prominent and cast in the mould of Judah.
That passage was also the second time in the book a character had described the UK's only Jewish-born Prime Minister not by that more prominent and famous role, but as the "one-time" and (even more oddly) "some-time" Earl of Beaconsfield. The references were odd and left me with a lingering suspicion that Flynn was not comfortable that one of the UK's most famous C19 statesmen was of Jewish descent, and dismissive of his 'ennoblement'.
As it turned out the evil Jew was a red herring, but by the time that became clear Flynn had angered me even more by breaching what I consider to be a fundamental principle of fair play detective stories. If the detective discovers a clue they consider to be crucial, then the reader of the story should be able to find the same clue and work out its significance. In this story, a critical piece of the puzzle relates to one verse from the Bible, Psalm 135:20. Bathurst reads this verse, but the rendering he uses, which is central to his "Eureka!" moment in unlocking the case, does not exist anywhere. He makes much of the fact that a certain word occurs twice in that verse, when in fact it only occurs once. The fact that the one word in question is closely connected to the "evil Jew" red herring again made me uncomfortable too.
That's lazy research, the ultimate crime for any mystery writer to commit, and really annoying. As someone who's read the entire Bible more often than I could count, it was also a massive distraction, as I chased down multiple English translations , translations in several other languages and checked a Hebrew interlinear version and the Septuagint - all in an ultimately vain hunt for this mythical rendition on which Bathurst built much of his case. I did this not from any concern for religious or doctrinal purity, but simply because I was seriously hacked off that Flynn had made a completely non-existent rendition the key which by Bathurst's own statement unlocked the door to the mystery and let all the pieces fall in place. He might just as well have said, "it's here in the Third Revelation to Zaphod chapter 74, verse 16: "for the Snark was a Boojum, you see!"
This is the 17th Brian Flynn Bathurst novel I have read, and most I have quite enjoyed., some a great deal. This one I am scoring at 2/5 and that's being generous simply because Bathurst's exposition at the end shows that the story could have been interesting were it not for what definitely felt like Flynn's own unhealthy xenophobic fixation on people who "look Jewish" and his decision to cheat me on the one occasion when I thought I could actually play the game on a level playing field.