The Big Bow Mystery

by Israel Zangwill

Book Overview

On a chilly December morning in Bow, a working-class area in London's East End, a landlady unsuccessfully attempts to rouse a tenant whose door is locked and bolted from the inside. The alarmed landlady calls upon her neighbor, a retired Scotland Yard detective, who breaks down the door to reveal the tenant with his throat cut and no weapon in sight. "It seems clear that the deceased did not commit suicide," the coroner declares at the inquest, adding,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486814858
• ISBN13: 9780486814858
• Release Date: August 2017
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Historically significant and a great read

The fact that the mystery disappears after the second chapter in no way detracts from the joy of this book. From widowed boarding house attendants to freeloading artists to a detective that might as well be the anti-Sherlock Holmes, this is one of the funniest and meanest books to come out of the Victorian era. Known primarily for Children of the Ghetto, Israel Zangwill was a Jewish Victorian writer with an eye for the foibles and idicoies of every day life. The mystery is not so much abandoned as seen from a societal basis. We have the glory hounds, the newspaper stories, the sensationalists, and the vendors who gather outside the scene of the murder to sell food to the tourists. When the murderer is revealed, it's a bit of a letdown, but the trip from the beginning to the end is so enjoyable that you don't mind.