The Transvection Machine (1971) – Ed Hoch

There was a little girl,
Who had a little curl,
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good,
She was very good indeed,
But when she was bad she was horrid.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In the far flung feature of the 21st century, trouble is brewing for the united states. It’s beset by anti-technology terrorists, growing tensions with the Russo-Chinese alliance (as the cold war is apparently still going), there’s unrest on its moon colony, and Vander DeFoe, the cabinet secretary of extra-terrestrial defense, has died during a routine appendectomy. That last is problematic for two reasons. One, all routine surgeries are performed by medical robots, and it’s unheard of for anyone to die during a robotic operation. Second, and more importantly, DeFoe is the inventor of the transvection machine, which allows teleportation over great distances. It was first demonstrated by instantaneously transporting a woman from the US to India. Though still experimental, the hope was that it would allow for rapid transportation between Earth and the moon, giving the US an advantage in colonization. (This possibility is why DeFoe was appointed to the cabinet.) Without him, research on the device will likely stall out. It falls to “computer cop” Carl Crader to investigate his death. It seems impossible that it could have been murder, since the cassette tape (yes, I know…) on which the program for the operation was stored was both untampered with and located in a secure, central national medical facility. The tape's data was transmitted via telephone wire to the robot at the time of the surgery, precluding any interference. But if it somehow was murder, there’s certainly no shortage of suspects: DeFoe’s estranged wife, the ex-partner he cut out from their invention, or the aforementioned terrorists. Was it murder, or wasn’t it? And if it was, how could it have been committed? These are the central questions in Ed Hoch’s The Transvection Machine.

I started this book with high hopes. There are essentially no reviews of this book, so all I knew about it came from the blurb, but the outline made it seem like a hybrid mystery, and, as you can tell from past reviews, I’m a big fan of those. And it was by Ed Hoch, whose short stories were consistently good and who wrote some of the acknowledged masterpieces of the impossible crime sub-genre. So surely, I thought, this would be an excellent, or at least good, book. You no doubt already know how accurate that thought was. Anytime anyone starts out saying they had high hopes for something, it’s practically a sure thing that those hopes were disappointed. And this is a sterling confirmation of that trend. Bluntly, this book was truly awful. And not in the so-bad-it’s-good way either. No, it was awful in the agonizingly painful way.

As I am quite candid about the plot being my favorite aspect of mystery fiction, and as it was the plot which first attracted me to this, it makes sense to start my discussion there. As a preliminary, I should point out that this is most emphatically not a hybrid mystery. I had hopes that it would be an overlooked example, but it was not to be. As for the plot as it is (rather than as it might have been), the thing that strikes you about it as you read is how remarkably unfocused it is. For over half the book the character go back and forth (and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth…) trying to decide if it’s murder or not (while investigating in ways that only make sense if they already know that it is a murder). Now, there’s quite a lot of potential in that ambiguity, but unfortunately none of it is utilized here. It is blatantly obvious to the reader that, yes, it was murder. So why does it take the characters so long to figure it out? Well, midway through they address that very question. It seems that murders are so rare (despite the rampant violent terrorism?) that autopsies just aren’t routinely carried out anymore. This comes up when Crader, who, as the “most powerful law enforcement official since J. Edgar Hoover,” should presumably know this, asks why there hasn’t been an autopsy. And after finding this out he...doesn’t order one. Why not? It’s unaddressed in the story, but I can think of a couple of reasons. If an autopsy were performed, it would lead to the instant complete solution of the mystery. And if it were solved that soon, this would be a short story rather than a novel. It’s almost too obvious to point out, but this is terrible plotting. If your mystery story depends on the characters overlooking the obvious in order to stretch out the plot, something is wrong. And if that plot is so transparent that simply performing an autopsy would clear it up, something is very wrong. And if you, as the writer, absolutely can’t have an autopsy performed, maybe don’t set your book in a future with highly advanced medical science.

And speaking of things too obvious to point out, even after the characters definitively realize that a murder took place (over halfway through the book, mind), it still takes a frustratingly long time for them to solve it. And make no mistake, the who, how, and why are very easy to figure out. You could get close just by guessing, and with even a slight bit of effort will probably arrive at the solution, if it doesn’t just jump out at you altogether. That’s not to say that it’s well clued, as the cluing is rather indifferent. It’s simply that the plot is just that transparent. (And that the misdirection is literally just Crader saying rneyl va gur obbx gung ur qbrfa'g frr ubj gur phycevg pbhyq unir qbar vg, naq yngre ernyvmvat ubj ur pbhyq unir jvgubhg zhpu be nal arj rivqrapr.) In my last review I said that Philo Vance should be ashamed of himself for taking so long to identify the culprit, but compared to Carl Crader he’s truly a criminological genius.

The plot has other structural problems as well. It feels like parts from four or five books were chopped up and shuffled together. There are sections that feel like the sci-fi mystery we would expect, ones that feel like a political thriller, and ones that feel like a quasi-hard boiled story. There’s an extended sequence of someone escaping from prison on the moon (which could possibly have worked on its own, but which doesn’t at all fit in this novel) and another of Crader being kidnapped by the techno-terrorists on a tropical island. That last is especially egregious, going nowhere and serving only as padding. And since this wasn’t exactly a long novel to begin with, it stands out. The Transvection Machine feels like a confused patchwork of story elements that just don’t fit. 

But of course, plot isn’t everything. Good writing and characterization can save a book with a poor plot. Sadly, neither of those are in attendance here. The writing is very, very bland. It’s serviceable and nothing more. As for the characterization, it is, if you can believe it, even worse than the plot. At best the characters are cardboard cutouts, names on the page with no distinguishing features whatsoever (Crader himself is a notable example of this). At worst, they go from indistinguishable to profoundly unsympathetic. The best example of this is Earl Jazine, the creepy Archie Goodwin to Crader’s incompetent Nero Wolfe, who, despite apparently being in a relationship with Crader’s secretary, chases after every female character he comes across. He strings along the nurse who was handling DeFoe’s operation and sleeps with DeFoe’s widow, who he was sent to question and who he actively suspects of being his killer. And this is one of the protagonists!

And then there’s Euler Frost, an anti-machine terr...(you know, I’m just going them neo-ludites from now on. It’s simpler to type.) a neo-ludite who escaped incarceration on the moon, returned to Earth, and is a suspect in the murder. He (and his whole plot line) exist only to voice Hoch’s complaints about the encroachment of technology into modern life. Not, mind you, that any of its supposedly deleterious effects are ever actually shown. But some of the characters complain about it, so it must be bad. This plot element culminates in what may be the biggest misfire in the book, something which blows even Jazine’s skeevyness out of the water. (Spoilers for the finale of the book, which has nothing to do with the mystery.) Gur arb-yhqvgrf, nf gur ortvaavat bs gurve eroryvba ntnvafg grpuabybtl, oybj hc gur cerivbhfyl zragvbarq prageny zrqvpny yvoenel naq pbzchgre flfgrz, juvpu unaqyrf gur bccrengvbaf sbe nyy bs gur Havgrq Fgngrf. N terng qrny vf znqr bs ubj gurl znxr fher abg gb xvyy nal bs gur fgnss, ohg vg'f zragvbarq rneyvre va gur obbx ubj ener fhetrbaf ner orpnhfr bs gur cerinyrapr naq fnsrgl bs pbzchgrevmrq zrqvpvar. Fb gurl pbaqrza hagbyq zvyyvbaf gb ceriragnoyr fhssrevat naq qrngu orpnhfr "gur znpuvarf ner whfg fb rivy." Naq abg bayl ner gurl gerngrq flzcngurgvpnyyl, Penqre rira fnlf ur jbhyq wbva gurz vs ur jrer lbhatre! These characters are all horrible people!

Ultimately, The Transvection Machine is something of an enigma. Hoch was a consistently good writer of short stories, and was by all accounts a very kind man. So what prompted him to write this, a novel with an embarrassingly transparent plot and main characters who are who are significantly worse than the actual murderer, is baffling. I have heard interesting things about the other, equally obscure, book in the series, The Frankenstein Factory, so I’ll probably read it at some point. But as for this, I have no hesitation in calling it the worst mystery I’ve ever read. It is equal parts infuriating and insulting to the reader’s intelligence. If I wind up doing some kind of end of year list, this will most assuredly by named as one of the lowlights of my  year. In one respect, at least, I’m glad I read this. As no other mystery blog has reviewed it, there’s no one warning people away from seeking out this book. Beware! Learn from my experience, so that my suffering may not be for naught. Avoid it as you would the cozy mystery section in a bookstore. For like that benighted place, The Transvection Machine has nothing to offer fans of clever mysteries.