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Just finished reading Mr. Pottermack's Oversight. I'd never actually read any of the Dr. Thorndyke mysteries before, and wow, they really are forensically detailed. The plot is an early example of the Columbo-style thriller where the audience follows the murderer's PoV, and the mystery is how the detective character will unravel the events. There was one moment which seemed like a bit of a coincidence, but having thought it over it really wasn't.
One thing I had to stop the book to look up -- it appears as though the Presumption of Death Act was only passed by the UK two years ago. That strikes me as astonishing, and I'm not sure what immediately preceded it; but in this 1930 novel it's apparently impossible to have anyone declared legally dead in the absence of a body, no matter how long they've been missing:
... he studied the law relating to Presumption of Death; but when he learned that, about 1850, the Court of Queen's Bench had refused to presume the death of a person who was known to have been alive in the year 1027, he decided that the staying power of the law was considerably greater than his own...
Mind you, the novel's events suggest that if a body turned up following a disappearance, and appeared to be roughly the appropriate size and gender to be the missing person, most inquests wouldn't look too hard. To say more would be spoilery.
OK -- I will say that I'm glad they imply near the end that a certain character knows the truth, or part of it, and is playing along; otherwise we'd have to assume she's remarkably unobservant for an amateur naturalist.
One thing I had to stop the book to look up -- it appears as though the Presumption of Death Act was only passed by the UK two years ago. That strikes me as astonishing, and I'm not sure what immediately preceded it; but in this 1930 novel it's apparently impossible to have anyone declared legally dead in the absence of a body, no matter how long they've been missing:
... he studied the law relating to Presumption of Death; but when he learned that, about 1850, the Court of Queen's Bench had refused to presume the death of a person who was known to have been alive in the year 1027, he decided that the staying power of the law was considerably greater than his own...
Mind you, the novel's events suggest that if a body turned up following a disappearance, and appeared to be roughly the appropriate size and gender to be the missing person, most inquests wouldn't look too hard. To say more would be spoilery.
OK -- I will say that I'm glad they imply near the end that a certain character knows the truth, or part of it, and is playing along; otherwise we'd have to assume she's remarkably unobservant for an amateur naturalist.
