Israel ZangwillThe Big Bow Mystery (August 5, 2007)
LibriVox recording of The Big Bow Mystery, by Israel Zangwill. Read by Adrian Praetzellis.
It's a cold and foggy night in London. A man is horribly murdered in his bedroom, the door locked and bolted on the inside. Scotland Yard is stumped. Yet the seemingly unsolvable case has, as Inspector Grodman says, "one sublimely simple solution" that is revealed in a final chapter full of revelations and a shocking denouement. Detective fiction afficionados will be happy to learn that all the evidence to solve the case is provided. One of the earliest “locked room” mystery stories, The Big Bow Mystery is also a satire of late Victorian society. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)
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This item is part of the collection: LibriVox
Author: Israel Zangwill
Date:
2007-08-05
Source:
Librivox recording of a public-domain text
Keywords: librivox; literature; audiobooks; mystery; zangwill; england; satire
Creative Commons license:
Public Domain
Individual Files
| Whole Item | Format | Size |
| big_bow_ap_librivox_128kb.m3u | 128kbps M3U | Stream |
| big_bow_ap_librivox_64kb.m3u | 64Kbps M3U | Stream |
| big_bow_ap_librivox_64kb_mp3.zip | 64Kbps MP3 ZIP | 146.7M |
| Audio Files | 128Kbps MP3 | Ogg Vorbis | 64Kbps MP3 |
| Chap 01 | 21.8M | 12.1M | 10.9M |
| Chap 02 | 21.2M | 11.8M | 10.6M |
| Chap 03 | 23.3M | 13.2M | 11.6M |
| Chap 04 | 19.7M | 11.1M | 9.8M |
| Chap 05 | 25.0M | 14.0M | 12.5M |
| Chap 06 | 25.2M | 18.1M | 12.6M |
| Chap 07 | 22.9M | 12.8M | 11.5M |
| Chap 08 | 22.6M | 12.9M | 11.3M |
| Chap 09 | 12.4M | 6.9M | 6.2M |
| Chap 10 | 45.1M | 25.4M | 22.6M |
| Chap 11 | 19.3M | 10.7M | 9.6M |
| Chap 12 | 34.9M | 19.6M | 17.5M |
| Information | Format | Size |
| big_bow_ap_librivox_files.xml | Metadata | 14.2K |
| big_bow_ap_librivox_meta.xml | Metadata | 1.8K |
| big_bow_ap_librivox_reviews.xml | Metadata | 1.2K |
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Reviewer: Philippe Horak -
-
April 7, 2008
Subject: A splendid reading
This is arguably the first 'locked-room' mystery novel (1892 UK; 1895 US), that is, a detective story in which the puzzle aspect is the critical element of the plot rather than being an ancillary item, as it was in Le Fanu's Uncle Silas, for example. It is also a pre-Golden-Age-of-Detection prototype in that it follows the rules of 'fair play' by providing the evidence for the solution in the form of clues imbedded in the text, supplies alternative solutions and suspects -- the classic 'red herring' approach -- and has a 'least-likely' suspect as the villain. All that it is lacking is what we would call a proper detective who out-thinks the reader.
Many thanks to Adrian Praetzellis whose performance is commendable. A highly recommended reading.