The False Inspector Dew

Possibly the Cleverest Ever Ending to a Detective Novel

The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey was featured in the CWA’s shortlist of the best crime novels and The Times 100 Best Crime Novels of the Twentieth Century.

The book has a remarkable plot twist. It is worth reading for the last two pages alone.

Synopsis

Walter Baranov is a henpecked dentist in 1920s London. His domineering, overbearing wife, Lydia, his wife, is a woman of means, an actress and an heiress. She keeps his dental practice in Belgravia afloat whilst he is busily trying to make it a success.

Frustrated by her lack of work in London’s theatres — there is only so much demand for middle-aged actresses — Lydia Baranov decides to give up on the West End. She wants to make her mark in the burgeoning Hollywood. So she sells her husband’s dental practice from underneath him and buys two tickets for New York aboard the Ocean Liner Mauritania. After all, there are plenty of people in Hollywood who need dental work.

Little known to Mrs Baranov, her husband has an admirer, Alma Webster. When Alma hears how Walter’s wife is treating him, they hatch a plot, a scheme to get rid of Lydia once and for all.

Review

Peter Lovesey writes a fascinating account of transatlantic travel before the invention of the jumbo jet. He builds upon real-life events, the sinking of RMS Lusitania and the murder of the actress Gay Gibson. He then adds a few historical characters. These include Inspector Dew, the man who arrested Dr Crippin whilst he fled across the Atlantic and Captain Arthur Rostron, who rescued many of the survivors of the Titanic. Add to that a couple of card sharps, a sprinkling of millionaires and a murder, all within the confines of an ocean liner, and you have the ingredients of a classic British mystery.

Whilst Lovesey’s tale is a tribute to the genre, he doesn’t play on amateur detectives, clues and red herrings. Nor is he fixated on a cleverer-than-you locked room puzzle. Instead, he develops quietly funny characters and places them in awkward situations of their own making. There is more than one laugh-out-loud moment. Meanwhile, he gives his readers well-researched insights into life on board a transatlantic liner.

This is a cosy crime novel; there isn’t any gore, violence or foul language. Whilst nothing in it would make you call it a thriller, Lovesey builds subtle suspense and lures you into a (relatively) modern take on a classic detection novel.

The real surprise is that a quietly accomplished British historical mystery has won so many plaudits. The book has a twist in the tail. The twist is so cunning that neither Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, V.I Warshawski, nor all three of them together would have seen it coming.

Of course, you could be cleverer than they are, but I bet you are not.

Excerpt

To Alma, the plan to do away with Lydia and escape with Walter to America was more romantic than anything in Ethel M. Dell. It made The Knave of Diamonds seem insipid. It was wicked and audacious and it would bind her more strongly to Walter than any ceremony of marriage. Their secret would unite them forever. They would live in luxury in Manhattan, and Walter would be the finest dentist in New York. They would take trips to Niagara and Nantucket and New Orleans and San Francisco. Mentally she was still touring the United States when Walter, firmly bogged down in England, said, ‘We really ought to decide what to do with her.’

‘Do with her?’

‘Lydia.’

‘But we decided, darling.’

‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean after that. Where shall we put her?’

‘Oh.’

They were sitting on a bench in the Richmond Terrace Gardens. It was one of those brilliant September evenings when every detail of the Thames Valley was picked out by the low-angled sun. Filaments of cirrus cloud lay across the sky becoming pinker by the minute.

‘Dr Crippen buried his wife in the cellar,’ observed Alma.

‘And Inspector Dew went down there with a spade.’

‘Horrid Inspector Dew.’

Walter gave a shrug. ‘Just doing his job.’

The False Inspector Dew by Peter Lovesey