No. 17

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 224
Series: Ben the Tramp #1
Rating:

Synopsis:

The first book featuring Ben, the lovable, humorous ex-sailor and down-at-heels rascal who can't help running into trouble.

Ben is back home from the Merchant Navy, penniless as usual and looking for digs in fog-bound London. Taking shelter in an abandoned old house, he stumbles across a dead body - and scarpers. Running into a detective, Gilbert Fordyce, the reluctant Ben is persuaded to return to the house and investigate the mystery of the corpse - which promptly disappears The vacant No.17 is the rendezvous for a gang of villains, and the cowardly Ben finds himself in the thick of thieves with no way of escape.

Ben's first adventure, No.17, began life in the 1920s as an internationally successful stage play and was immortalised on film by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. Its author, J. Jefferson Farjeon, wrote more than 60 crime thrillers, eight featuring Ben the tramp, his most popular character.

I was really not a fan of Joseph Jefferson Farjeon’s No. 17, alas. I read it via Serial Reader, and that’s pretty much the only reason I was able to stick with it, because it came in bitesize chunks, one section a day. The reason for this is… the main character, Ben the Tramp, a former sailor down on his luck who is an absolute total coward whose dialogue is rendered phonetically.

The book would be a quarter of the length if Ben didn’t spend every scene making no sense to anyone, trying to run away, interrupting, etc, etc. Even once Fordyce arrives, giving another steady character to drive the story, he spends so much time getting Ben to explain things, arguing with Ben, and being interrupted by Ben, that it takes forever to get anywhere.

Add that to a bit of insta-love as a minor sideplot, and it’s just unbearable. I did enjoy some of Farjeon’s other work (the books republished by the British Library Crime Classics series), but Ben the Tramp is definitely not for me.

Rating: 1/5