Georgi Gospodinov's Death and the Gardener

"Surely this is why we tell stories. To create another parallel corridor where the world and everything in it are in their rightful places. To divert the story down another furrow when danger and death flood in, just as he would divert the water into another row in his garden."

He, in the sentence above, is the dying father of the narrator; the father liked to garden. The narrator is a middle-aged Bulgarian novelist whose name is only given as Georgi, and that only in the flap description.

Of the four novels of Gospodinov's I've read this easily feels the most autobiographical, but Gospodinov in a headnote insists it is a novel.

The father Dinyo had been diagnosed with fatal lung cancer seventeen years earlier. Rather miraculously at that time it had gone into remission, but now, in the late fall of 2023, it's come roaring back. Georgi starts a handwritten diary to deal with his feelings. When the first set of scans comes back, there's basically no hope:

"Well, at least till Christmas, we'll get together, see the snowdrops spring up, my father said, looking at the doctor with such expectation. Christmas was twenty days away, almost no time at all. 

Christmas might be possible, the doctor replied.

And this answer was at once the most merciful and merciless I have ever heard."

Georgi's father was a storyteller himself, not professionally, just in conversation, and when the present becomes too difficult to bear, Georgi recalls one of his father's stories. It's clear Georgi simply likes his father in addition to loving him. Georgi, the writer (and reader,) turns to other writers for consolation. There's Sontag, unsurprisingly, who herself was diagnosed with a cancer that was supposed to kill her, which went away for a number of years, but in the end did return; also Montaigne, various stoics, Borges. Homer, and here as well, is a frequent touchstone for Gospodinov.

There are a few markers this is a novel. Gaustine, a recurring character in Gospodinov's fiction, shows up in this, but mostly to be quoted. Gospodinov uses himself as a character in other novels; The Physics of Sorrow is in some ways a generational family novel, but with an amusing medical/science-fiction-y twist to aid the narration. In the Booker International winner, Time Shelter, the writer Georgi Gospodinov is hired as a consultant for a psychological therapeutic project, because he's good at storytelling; Gaustine, though, makes the plot go in that novel. The distance in this between Georgi the character and Georgi Gospodinov the actual novelist feels much smaller. It's less expansive, less playful than his other novels, but also very touching. 

The Tragedy of X

"Well," said Inspector Thumm suddenly, "plain or fancy, it's a puzzler, and Mr. Bruno thought you'd be interested."

Inspector Thumm of the New York Police and Walter Bruno, the district attorney, call up on Drury Lane, retired Shakespearean actor, for help in a particularly puzzling murder case. Lane had been a help on a previous case. 

Harvey Longstreet, of the brokerage firm De Witt and Longstreet, was poisoned on the streetcar. He was a travelling with his business partner and other associates, but Longstreet wasn't very popular, and any of them would cheerfully have seen him dead. But how was it done? It was raining and the windows were closed; the streetcar was full after the Longstreet party got on and they didn't make any stops. The poison was fast-acting and everyone who could have done it was there.

The conductor of that street car sends a letter to Thumm saying he had information; his body is found bashed on the head and thrown from a ferry boat. And Longstreet's partner De Witt is murdered on a suburban train. The Commuter Murders! 

After Lane has heard the facts of the first murder, he says he knows who did it, but can't prove it. I read this twenty-five years ago, and I remembered the nature of the clue that Lane sees (though he doesn't disclose it until the end) but had still forgotten who the muderer was. But it is one of the best Queen mysteries, and shows up on best overall mystery lists as well. After reading Drury Lane's Last Case recently, I thought it was time to reread this one. Highly recommended!

Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt

Golden Age (1933). Train. 

Drury Lane's Last Case

    "Sure, sure," said Thumm in a trembling voice. A thousand dollars! Tears of joy gathered in his stony eyes. These were lean days. A thousand dollars for keeping a skinny envelope in his safe!

    "Second," and the man went swiftly to the door, "if I should fail to call on a twentieth, you must not open the envelope except in the presence of Mr. Drury Lane."

 

It's 1933 and Inspector Thumm has retired from the New York police to hang up his shingle as a private investigator. But when he was still with New York's finest he'd solved three earlier cases with the aid of Drury Lane, retired Shakespearean actor. 

On the 20th of May, Thumm receives the needed phone call, but on the 20th of June, nothing. He prepares to contact Drury Lane and open the envelope.

 

But in the meantime he's got another case. Donoghue, an ex-cop, but now a guard at the Britannic Museum, has disappeared. The same day that he disappeared, someone smashed a display case at the museum. At first it seems nothing has happened, but eventually it's discovered that someone replaced a 1599 printing of Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare with a 1606 printing from the same publisher. The 1606 printing is actually rarer, and presumably more valuable.

 

Are the two cases connected? Of course they are!

 

Well, what's in the envelope unsealed in the presence of Drury Lane? It's that note shown on the cover, on Saxon Library stationary, with the mysterious letters 3HS wM. The Saxon Library has just given that 1599 Shakespeare to the Britannic Museum, so there's your connection. But what do those mysterious letters mean? 

 

Actually that was the most disappointing thing about the mystery. Turn the picture upside down--well, since that may be a little difficult unless you're reading this on a phone, let me do it for you. 😉 Ah, now it reads Wm SHe. Since we're dealing with stolen copies of Shakespeare's poetry, you probably can guess the nature of the clue. But Thumm couldn't, and nobody else could either, except maybe Drury Lane, who was coy about what he knew.

 

A second somebody also disappears before a body is found murdered, blown up in a building. First they have to determine just who it is who has been killed, and then who did the killing. The ending was both surprising and satisfactory.

 

The cousins behind the Ellery Queen pseudonym wrote four novels with Drury Lane as the hero detective; they originally came out under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, though eventually they fessed up it was them. The first two--The Tragedy of X and The Tragedy of Y--often show up on lists of all-time greatest mysteries. This isn't quite in the league of those two, but it's still pretty entertaining.

 

Vintage Mystery Scavenger Hunt

 

Golden Age (1933). Book.