Mr. Pottermack's Oversight

by R. Austin Freeman

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 302
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating:

Synopsis:

On a sultry afternoon in July, a man stumbles through thick foliage and rough ground, making for the coast. He wears prisoner’s garb and the guards are hot on his heels. Happening upon a bather’s clothes – the bather nowhere in sight – the escapee takes the risk, changes and leaves the scene looking the part of the average beachcomber.

But it can be hard to stay hidden forever. When a blackmailer intrudes for the last time upon the promising life of the man who now calls himself Mr. Pottermack, a violent fate befalls him, and the stakes are set: Pottermack must avoid discovery at all costs to escape the hangman’s noose for murder.

When Pottermack’s attempts to fabricate evidence arouse the suspicions of the fiercely forensic Dr. Thorndyke, a nerve-racking game is afoot as we follow both detective and suspect in their contest to root out – or bury – the damning truth in this inverted-mystery classic, first published in 1930.

I was looking forward to Mr Pottermack’s Oversight, because I’d read one of R. Austin Freeman’s earlier books and really liked it. It was slow and methodical, but in a way that was interesting. This one had the same style, but it was maybe a bit too slow and methodical, and Freeman’s interest in writing a sort of inverted mystery (the mystery is more how the detective works out what happened, since we see the crime committed directly, and spend most of the book with the killer) went maybe a bit toooo in depth. There’s a certain amount of detail that lends verisimilitude, and then there’s getting overly into detail about (for example) casting a copy of a shoe sole from a footprint…

That said, somewhere partway through I entered into the spirit of the thing a bit more and found myself reading as eagerly as I’d expected. I don’t know whether the pace just improved a bit there (probable) or maybe I just got used to the new expectations. For a killer, Pottermack is pretty likeable, though the sense that he’s justified is set up very very deliberately and transparently (the victim is a blackmailer who originally framed him for the crime he’s blackmailing him about).

I really wonder whether the lady in the case has realised that of course it is her lost love… but we’re never told that explicitly.

Overall, I genuinely enjoyed it, but it felt like a bit of a book of two halves — though I couldn’t put my finger on a specific dividing point. Hard to rate, as a consequence, but ultimately I’ll go with my final assessment: a fascinating “inverted mystery”, if a little slow at times.

Rating: 4/5