![]() ![]() ![]() Instead of Dickens’ famous Megalosaurus waddling up Holborn Hill, the fog clears to reveal only a perpetually disappointed widow clearing her grate. There are mornings when King Fog masses his molecules of carbon in serried squadrons in the city, while he scatters them tenuously in the suburbs so that your morning train may bear you from twilight to darkness. Zangwill’s nickname was the ‘Dickens of the ghetto’, and in fact the opening to The Big Bow Mystery is Dickensian: Israel Zangwill’s other great contribution to literary history was his play The Melting Pot, which did much to capture the American immigrant experience and was a huge hit in its time. There are numerous antecedents (notably Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue), but this short novel of 1892 brought together most of the typical elements for the first time. The Big Bow Mystery is generally regarded as the first fully-fledged example of that staple of the mystery genre, the locked-room story. ‘”My God!” he cried.’ Mrs Drabdump and Inspector Grodman open the locked room. ![]()
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