Jumping Jenny

by Anthony Berkeley

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 240
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating:

Synopsis:

At a costume party with the dubious theme of "famous murderers and their victims," the know-it-all amateur criminologist Roger Sheringham is settled in for an evening of beer, small talk, and analyzing his companions. One guest in particular has caught his attention for her theatrics, and his theory that she might have several enemies among the partygoers proves true when she is found hanging from the "decorative" gallows on the roof terrace.

Noticing a key detail that could implicate a friend in the crime, Sheringham decides to meddle with the scene and unwittingly casts himself into jeopardy as the uncommonly thorough police investigation circles closer and closer to the truth.

Anthony Berkeley’s Jumping Jenny shows both his playfulness with the expectations of the genre and his tendency toward misogyny, making it an interesting read that’s also pretty darn frustrating. The man had a problem with women, and a fetish about spanking them to “fix” them, and this wasn’t quite as obtrusive as in some of his books, but did flit in and out of the story.

It doesn’t help that I don’t like Berkeley’s “detective”, Roger Sheringham, at the best of times — and here he’s suspecting everyone of murder except the right person, and trying to shield everyone from looking like murderers, while getting everything absolutely wrong and making everything worse. The structure amuses for a while, but it starts to really get frustrating.

In the end, “interesting but not enjoyable as a whole” would be my verdict, even without Berkeley’s misogyny.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)