The Big Bow Mystery

Description

Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery is one of the first, if not the very first full-length whodunit novel, a locked-room mystery that keeps the reader engaged and weighing evidence as the story progresses. Written and published in series in 1891, the novel was a resounding success and established Zangwill as one of the best novelists of his time.

The story sets off in Bow, a working class neighborhood in London. Mrs. Drabdump , a landlady goes upstairs to wake up one of her lodgers, Mr. Arthur Constant, but she finds the man dead in his bathroom, with the apartment locked from the inside. The investigation begins and the coroner decides that the man had not committed suicide and he had not been murdered either, so the landlady and one of his other lodgers, a once famous, but now retired detective are faced with a disturbing puzzle. The subject might be gloomy, but the way Zangwill presents it is very humorous. The novel is full of satiric remarks and it is also full of events and turns of situations that are also very funny. The ending is surprising, partly because Zangwill is the master of endings and partly because, as he admits in the book’s preface, he didn’t know who committed the murder till the end.

The Big Bow Mystery is, in fact, much more than a whodunit – it is also an account of Victorian society and of Victorian England. Zangwill was not only a novelist and the author of numerous essays, plays and other pieces, but also a social and political activist and he uses the novel as a vehicle to express his ideas and the social theories he was championing as well. All these aspects make The Big Bow Mystery a complex and entertaining novel that informs the readers about the Victorian Era and keeps them on the edge of their chairs until the mystery is finally solved.
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