Golden Age of Detective Fiction

R. Austin Freeman’s “Gleanings from the Wreckage” was first published in 1927 as part of The Magic Casket. The Magic Casket collects nine short stories starring Dr. Thorndyke and Jervis, with “Gleanings from the Wreckage” being the final story in the collection and one of my favorites.

Plot Synopsis:

Dr. Thorndyke and Jervis are walking through the woods when they hear an explosion. They rush toward the sound and find a house ablaze. After the fire is quelled, police posit that an explosion in a laboratory inside the home caused the fire. Once the fire is suppressed, the charred remains of a man are found among the wreckage. The widow of the man killed in the blast begs Dr. Thorndyke to look into what happened because it is rumored that her husband committed suicide while she believes he was murdered.

Dr. Thorndyke agrees to look into the case because he noticed several minor points about the body, which raised his suspicions that the body found in the wreckage was not as it should have been. To satisfy his curiosity, Dr. Thorndyke agrees to investigate and aid the widow and the police as long as he isn’t called to testify in court. Stipulations were agreed to, and curiosity roused Dr. Thorndyke, who began to sift through what had happened before the explosion.

The Review

“Gleanings from the Wreckage” is one of my favorite Dr. Thorndyke mysteries because it showcases how his vast medical training is bolstered by his incredibly detailed forensic knowledge, which allows him to interpret clues from the scene correctly, when neither Dr. Christopher Jervis- who probably has a better grasp on the medical intricacies of the human body nor the inspector in charge of the case, again, a man highly versed in forensic techniques, can interpret. The co-mingling of both these specialties in Dr. Thorndyke solves the case.

There is a unique and somewhat grisly accounting of what happened to the body, who is poorly found charred with his hands queerly positioned, strange, unnatural markings on the body, and a slew of other clues that are told with relish. Usually, stories during this period shy away from body horror, preferring their inspectors and private detective to glide over the specifics of death and what happened to the body, but in “Gleanings from the Wreckage,” Freeman spends an excessive amount of time ogling the body- it probably shocked the original audience- and it fact at points made me briefly queasy. Still, the body is essential, probably the most critical aspect of the story, and if you listen carefully you’ll have plenty of clues to work along the same lines as Dr. Thorndyke.

Dr. Thorndyke, positioned by his specialization, has much knowledge to help him with this case. Still, there is a feeling that Freeman made Dr. Jervis a little dumbed down, especially for a man who has been observing Thorndyke for years and hopes to emulate his methods. Jervis gets stuck on a particular tack and tries unsuccessfully to obfuscate the reader to a rather obvious red herring. There is room for Jervis to interpret the clues correctly, but they fail to clear the final hurdle, which would have made the interplay between the two men stronger.

However, it’s a well-clustered story with lots of seedy characters and hidden motivations to trick the reader into going up the garden path. The story is populated by beautiful Victorian prose, which paints the characters well.

“Gleanings from the Wreckage” is a well-made and well-told tale, and it would be a good introduction to the Dr. Thorndyke canon for readers who are unfamiliar with his stories.

I recommend Simon Stanhope’s YouTube audiobook narration of the story on his channel, Bitesized Audio Classics, for a superb performance of “Gleanings from the Wreckage“.

Dr. Thorndyke Short Story Reviews

The Stranger’s Latchkey (1909)

R. Austin Freeman Biography

Richard Freeman was born in Soho, London on 11 April 1862, the son of Ann Maria (nee Dunn) and Richard Freeman, a tailor. He was originally named Richard, and later added the Austin to his name.

He became a medical trainee at Middlesex Hospital Medical College, and was accepted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons.

He married Annie Elizabeth Edwards in 1887; they had two sons. After a few weeks of married life, the couple found themselves in Accra on the Gold Coast, where he was assistant surgeon. His time in Africa produced plenty of hard work, very little money and ill health, so much so that after seven years he was invalided out of the service in 1891. He wrote his first book, ‘Travels and Life in Ashanti and Jaman’, which was published in 1898. It was critically acclaimed but made very little money.

On his return to England he set up an eye/ear/nose/throat practice, but in due course his health forced him to give up medicine, although he did have occasional temporary posts, and in World War I he was in the ambulance corps.

He became a writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr Thorndyke. The first of the books in the series was ‘The Red Thumb Mark’ (1907). His first published crime novel was ‘The Adventures of Romney Pringle’ (1902) and was a collaborative effort published under the pseudonym Clifford Ashdown. Within a few years he was devoting his time to full-time writing.

With the publication of ‘The Singing Bone’ (1912) he invented the inverted detective story (a crime fiction in which the commission of the crime is described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator, with the story then describing the detective’s attempt to solve the mystery). Thereafter he used some of his early experiences as a colonial surgeon in his novels.

A large proportion of the Dr Thorndyke stories involve genuine, but often quite arcane, points of scientific knowledge, from areas such as tropical medicine, metallurgy and toxicology.

He died in Gravesend on 28 September 1943.

– From Goodreads