Comes a bishop, maybe,
or a solemn D.D.
Oh, beware of his
anger provoking!
“Oh! A private buffoon,”
The Yeomen of the Guard, Gilbert & Sullivan
The period from around 1910-30 was an important one for
mystery fiction. It was then that conventions of the genre took shape, when ideas
and structures drawn from the works of numerous writers coalesced into a definite
form. What’s striking about many books from this period is just how well they
hold up. Works such as Trent’s Last Case, The Mysterious Affair at
Styles, & the Father Brown stories, which contributed substantially to
the development of mystery fiction, remain satisfying and enduring examples of
the genre they helped create. Unfortunately, while this was a surprisingly
common occurrence, not every influential work is necessarily a shining example
of mystery fiction. For proof, we need only look to works such as The Bishop
Murder Case by S. S. Van Dine.
Though it isn’t as well known as the other examples I
listed, The Bishop Murder Case had a major influence on the development
of mystery fiction, originating tropes that would become staples of the genre. Most
obviously, it is the first example of a series of fictional crimes patterned around
nursery rhymes, a device which was adopted by many authors, most notably Agatha
Christie and Ellery Queen. That’s a significant enough innovation as it is, but
the nursery rhyme killing is in fact a specific manifestation of a more general
concept, which, as far as I can tell, also originated in Bishop. There
doesn’t seem to be a generally-used English term for it, but in Japanese it’s referred
to as mitate, which translates to “resembling.” In a nursery rhyme
murder, the crime (obviously) is made to resemble a nursery rhyme. But of
course, there are many other types of resemblance which could be used, such as resemblance
to a literary or musical work, to a piece of art, or even to a scientific or
mathematical concept. In addition, the resemblance may lie in the general
situation, the relation of the characters, or in some element other than the
murder itself. This idea of establishing an analogy involving the crime or
situation has proven quite influential in mystery fiction, vastly expanding the
field of potential plots.
In addition to its general influence, I’m convinced that Bishop
also inspired an aspect of another well-known novel, Queen’s Cat of Many Tails.
That novel, which originated many of the tropes of the serial-killer mystery, places
an emphasis on the panic caused by the seemingly indiscriminate murders committed
by the unknown title character. Having read both, it’s impossible not to notice
striking similarities between many passages in Cat which portray the
collective reactions of New York City to the serial killings and the beginning of
Bishop’s eighth chapter, which details the public’s reaction to the
newspaper publication of the Bishop’s letter. I don’t think that this resemblance
was an intentional reference (certainly it doesn’t come up in the published
letters of Dannay and Lee from when they were writing Cat), but given
the degree to which they were influenced by Van Dine, I think it’s safe to say
that this passage made an impact on the cousins and was a subconscious influence
on their work.
So much for Bishop’s historical importance; how does
it fare as a mystery, or as a work of fiction? As you’ve no doubt gathered from
my introduction, I don’t think very highly of it, but it’s not without its good
points, which are what I’d rather lead with. For one thing, it’s a consistently
entertaining novel. As I remarked earlier, the premise is excellent and the
novel’s action never flags, with crimes and significant events happening every
few chapters. And though Van Dine’s style may not be as distinctive as, say,
Carr’s or Innes’, it was well suited to the story. While I was reading the
book, I never wanted to put it down.
However, while the prose style is good, there are some
problems with the writing. The customary illustration would be to complain about
Vance being an annoying character, perhaps making reference to Ogden Nash’s
celebrated witticism. But honestly, I didn’t have a problem with him. Sure, his
canonically real but linguistically fake English accent bugged me, but that
particular character trait only stuck around for a few chapters. Candidly, Vance
wasn’t the annoying part of the novel, Van Dine was. To elaborate, the conceit of
this series is that Van Dine is a friend of Vance’s and is writing up these cases
after the fact. The problem that came from conflating the author with the
fictional narrator is that it gave Van Dine an apparently irresistible temptation
to show everyone how smart he was. Bishop is pack to the gills with
displays of (often spurious) erudition. For example, in chapter 8, Vance reads
up on psychology, thinking it might help with the case. Nothing wrong with
that. But there is something wrong with Van Dine’s decision to list, in
a single, paragraph length run-on sentence, the titles and authors of all 14
books consulted, with the titles in the original French or German. There is
absolutely no reason for this pedantry, its only purpose is to allow Van Dine
to show off. This lengthy paragraph disturbs the flow of the narrative, but it
doesn’t have any impact on the plot. Unfortunately, there are other instances
of showoffishness that are rather more…impactful.
(The upcoming paragraph points out an issue with one of the
clues. For reasons which will be clear, it doesn’t actually spoil anything of
significance. However, if you want to read Bishop completely blind (and have
a more frustrating experience when you do), feel free to skip it.)
One of the few clues in Bishop (we’ll talk about that
later) is a scrap of paper with the Reimann-Christoffel curvature tensor
written on it which was planted on the body of one of the victims. Vance uses this
to deduce some psychological characteristics of the murderer (we’ll talk about
this later as well). The problem is that Van Dine has little to no clue what the
formula he includes actually says. When Vance explains his reasoning, the
meaning he gives for the tensor is wrong. The clue flat out does not say
what Vance (or rather, Van Dine) claims it does. The reader has no chance
whatsoever to interpret it correctly. In a sense, someone who’s never heard of
the Riemann tensor is better off than one who has, as one who’s unfamiliar with
it could possibly(?) guess its significance, while someone who knows about it even
in the most non-technical terms certainly could not. If Van Dine had bothered
to check his understanding against any general reference on the subject (the Encyclopedia
Britannica, say) this problem could have been avoided, but, given the
overall tone of the book, it seems he was just so cocksure of his knowledge
that he didn’t bother confirming it. (Believe it or not, we’ll also talk about this
later.)
Of course, even if he had gotten that fact right, the
reader still wouldn’t be able to reach the same solution as Vance. That’s
because the conclusion drawn from that piece of evidence is a tortured argument
based on a dubious and subjective line of psychological reasoning. An alarming
number of the “deductions” in Bishop follow the same pattern. Often,
they’re based on discredited psychological theories, and all are based on Vance’s
impressions of things, rather than any objective fact of the situation. Starting
from the same information, you could just as easily reach an entirely different
set of conclusions. And they would have at least as much theoretical validity
as Vance’s. They could hardly have less.
These flaws I’ve been harping on may seem like separate
issues, but they all come together, culminating in something which is even less
than the sum of its parts. Specifically, chapter 21, “Mathematics and Murder,”
which is, not to mince words, one of the greatest farragos of nonsense that I’ve
come across in my years of reading mystery fiction. Little of consequence
happens in this chapter, as it solely consists of Vance monologuing about the
psychological characteristics of the criminal. (Don’t worry about spoilers, nothing
of any consequence is ad-Vanced in this chapter.) Vance says that the murders
are the product of a mathematical mind. Why, you ask? Because the study of
mathematics causes one to “have an enormous contempt for human life” and “scoff
at all human values.” One absorbed in these studies becomes a “sadist” with an “infantile
complex.” Vance (or rather, as Vance is clearly acting as an author avatar, Van
Dine) “proves” this by myriad examples drawn from mathematics, physics, and astronomy.
(Bizarrely, he refers to all three subjects as mathematics. In fact, there are
fewer purely mathematical examples than there are scientific). That said, and
in keeping with his use of the tensor, nearly all of these examples are completely
misunderstood! Even on their own terms they’re meaningless. And they’re
meaningless in the context of the story as well, since all of the suspects fit
Vance’s definition of a “mathematicia
n,” be they actual mathematician,
physicist, or hobbyist chess player. As a student in a physical science
and enjoyer of math, I could almost take offence at this, if it weren’t so ludicrously
funny. It almost seems as if Van Dine were bitter at scientists, perhaps (and this
is the merest speculation, not seriously meant) because books by the eminent
physicists of the day became bestsellers, while few were buying his book(s) on Nietzsche…
Now, I’m not highlighting this chapter simply because it’s
deeply (and unintentionally) hilarious. It represents an egregious, though subtitle,
example of a type of reasoning that is utterly impermissible in mystery
fiction. Vance decides that a mathematician (very broadly construed) committed
the crime based on a broad psychological generalization about a class of people.
You don’t immediately notice it because the group is a professional class, but imagine
that he said it had to have been committed by a woman because the crimes could
only have been a product of a feminine mind. Or if he had singled out a
particular ethnic group on a similar line of reasoning. Then the fallacy would
stand out. An author cannot impute psychological traits like that to a group of
people. Mathematicians, scientists, and chess players are people with individual
temperaments and habits of mind. Some may be meticulous while others may be
disorganized. Some may possibly be deranged, infantile sadists, but most are
not. It would be one thing to, for example, say that a criminal was likely a surgeon
because they tied a surgical knot in committing a crime. It would be quite
another, however, to say that they must be a surgeon because the crime could
only have been executed by one with a surgeon’s callousness. The former is a legitimate
deduction, the latter is nonsense.
At this point I’ve said a lot about the book, but little
about the mystery itself. Could it be that, despite the book’s many issues,
there’s a satisfying mystery buried within? Sadly, no, it could not. There are
two reasons for this. One is that there is an utter dearth of clues. Oh, there
are plenty of psychological “clues,” but as we’ve seen, they lack any semblance
of rigor. There is only one piece of tangible evidence, which is ignored for
much of the book, simply because the book would be over too soon if it weren’t.
From a structural perspective, this is a glaring flaw. Ideally, the detective
should solve the crime as soon as they have all the evidence needed to do so.
When the detective gets that evidence midway through the book, and does nothing
with it (and allows more people to be killed!), they don’t exactly come off
looking all that competent. The other flaw is that almost all of the suspects
get killed off, making it fairly trivial to spot the murderer, even without the
decisive piece of evidence. (From what I gather, this is a problem with many of
Van Dine’s novels.) These flaws are both major on their own, but together they
combine to form an enormous flaw. To wit (and this completely spoils the book):
gur cvrpr bs rivqrapr vf gung bayl gjb crbcyr jrer noyr gb unir pbzzvggrq bar
bs gur zheqref. Bar bs gurfr crbcyr vf yngre xvyyrq bss. Bar jbhyq guvax gung
gur pbapyhqvat fgrc bs guvf flyybtvfz jbhyq or boivbhf, ohg Inapr tbrf n
ybbbbbat gvzr jvgubhg pbafvqrevat gur cbffvovyvgl. For all the talk about how
this is one of Vance’s most difficult cases, the reader is likely to disagree. Frankly,
Vance, Van Dine (fictional version), and D.A. Markham don’t exactly seem like
the brightest bulbs in the chandelier of justice for missing that inference.
Also, while Bishop is the first example of the nursery
rhyme killing, it is also the first example of the characteristic flaw of that
trope. Specifically, there’s no reason for the killer to make the crimes
resemble nursery rhymes. In keeping with the pseudo-psychologism of the rest of
the novel, the reason just boils down to “the killer was a deranged
mathematician.” The whole point of the device is that the analogy between the
murders and the nursery rhyme signifies something. Certainly, it adds interest
to a story regardless of the motivation, but the solution will be an anticlimax
if there is no reason behind it, no meaning to speak of. And even ignoring that,
“the culprit was crazy” is never a satisfying justification for any
aspect of the solution to a mystery.
Thanks to these many and varied flaws, I cannot recommend The
Bishop Murder Case as a mystery. It was entertaining, and it says something
about Van Dine’s writing that, even with the stylistic issues and rampant
pedantry, it was an entertaining read. But if you read it, you’ll probably wind
up disappointed. That said, anyone with an interest in the history and
development of mystery fiction absolutely needs to read it, as it had a
significant and lasting impact. But for everyone else, if, after all this, it
still interests you and you can find a cheap copy, read it. But don’t go seeking
it out, because it’s really not worth the effort…
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