Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Jumping Jenny, a book that was on my 20 books of summer list for 2023, is making a triumphant return for #20booksofsummer24. If you’re enjoying my #20booksofsummer24 reviews and want to see who else is participating and what books they are reviewing, check out the master list over @746books.

Plot Synopsis

Jumping Jenny begins with a unique and gripping setup: a costume party with a macabre theme. Roger Sheringham, a recurring character in Berkeley’s works, attends the party hosted by his friends. The theme of the party is “famous murderers,” setting a darkly humorous tone right from the start. The atmosphere is charged with merriment, yet underlying tensions simmer among the guests, particularly concerning Ronald’s sister-in-law, the obnoxious and overbearing Mrs. Ena Stratton.

Ena Stratton, who is thoroughly disliked by nearly everyone present, is found hanging from the gallows constructed for the party’s entertainment. What initially appears to be a theatrical prank quickly becomes a chilling reality when it’s confirmed that Angela is dead. The question arises: was it suicide, or did someone take advantage of the situation to commit murder?

Ever the amateur detective, Roger Sheringham immediately becomes embroiled in the mystery. The victim’s personality is a focal point for Sheringham; Ena was a woman whose unpleasantness seemed to provide many with a motive for murder. Sheringham’s challenge is not to identify the murderer but to prevent the police from solving the case since he believes Ena was murdered by his close friend.

The Review

Roger Sheringham delves into the investigation with his usual mix of curiosity and skepticism. As he clumsily interviews each suspect, he uncovers secrets that reveal the complex human dynamics at play and uses them to point the police in as many directions as possible to confuse them. Sheringham hopes that the ambiguity of the clues will have the police choose the most straightforward answer: that Ena accidentally hung herself.

Berkeley masterfully plays with the reader’s expectations. It’s not the role of the investigator to try and clear a suspect. The detective is supposed to be above the messy morass of human emotions of fear and empathy. However, the more Sheringham investigates, the less specific it becomes that his friend is the murderer. As Sheringham tries to shore up support for various pat solutions, guests keep bringing up new information or deciding to make a clean breast of everything to the police. Sheringham’s desperation and constant scrambling are darkly comic.

Unlike many mysteries of its time, Jumping Jenny is less about the “how” and more about the “why,” exploring the psychological motives that drive ordinary people to commit extraordinary crimes. As the investigation progresses, Sheringham and the reader must ponder under what circumstances murder is justified. In a bold narrative move, Berkeley questions the traditional detective story’s reliance on absolute justice, instead presenting a more nuanced and morally complex resolution. This moral ambiguity is a hallmark of Berkeley’s writing, offering a thought-provoking commentary on the nature of crime and punishment.

The ultimate narrative twist happens in the final few pages of the novel, where the reader learns what happened to Ena that night. Jumping Jenny has a genuinely shocking ending that redefines how absurd and frantic the other characters have been behaving and leaves the reader wondering: what would I have done in the moments before Ena’s tragic death?

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Roger Sheringham Series Reviews

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