The Big Bow Mystery - Softcover

Zangwill, Israel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1515314294 ISBN 13: 9781515314295

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015

Synopsis

Regarded as the first full-length locked room mystery, The Big Bow Mystery focuses on a murder that has occurred inside a locked room, with no clear indication as to the weapon used, the perpetrator of the horrendous crime, or a possible escape route. Scotland Yard is stumped. Yet the seemingly unsolvable case has, as Inspector Grodman says, "one sublimely simple solution" that is revealed in a final chapter full of revelations and a shocking denouement.

The Big Bow Mystery has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films.

About this title

About the Author:

Israel Zangwill (21 January 1864 – 1 August 1926) was a British humorist and writer. The Big Bow Mystery was the first locked room mystery novel. It has been almost continuously in print since 1891 and has been used as the basis for three commercial films. His play The Lens Grinder, based on the life of Spinoza, was widely produced.

From Publishers Weekly:

Whodunit fans who prefer their murders mysteriously committed behind locked doors will appreciate this reissue of the first impossible crime novel, penned by the unlikely Zangwill (1864-1926)-better known during his lifetime as an ardent British Zionist-in the late 1890s. Widowed landlady Mrs. Drabdump and retired Scotland Yarder Grodman batter down a secured and bolted bedroom door to find Arthur Constant, a hero of the working classes, dead from a cut throat. After suicide is quickly ruled out, the puzzle captures the city's imagination, with theory after theory (some poking fun at Poe's solution to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue") floated in the press, until Grodman himself returns to the lists to try to clear the man condemned to death for the crime. The plot device has been used many times since, but Zangwill deserves credit for inventing it and enlisting it in an entertaining and timeless plot. With a sardonic style and vivid, Dickensian characterizations of Victoria-era London, Zangwill still appeals to contemporary readers.
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About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1515314294
• ISBN 13: 9781515314295
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 105