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Jenkins, Herbert

Page history last edited by J F Norris 12 years, 7 months ago Saved with comment

Herbert Jenkins (1876-1923) was an English author and publisher. Jenkins seems to have been something of a dilettante at detective fiction, with his main interest a non-detective series character called 'Bindle'. Malcolm Sage, Detective is a competent but not exciting set of short stories about some fairly hackneyed situations. Sage himself is something of a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. He makes his first appearance in a short story collection called John Dene of Toronto. Perhaps fortunately, Herbert Jenkins had his own publishing company.

 

Malcolm Sage, Detective is available from Gutenberg Australia.

 

Mike Grost on Herbert Jenkins

 

The original magazine publication date, if any, of Jenkins' Malcolm Sage stories is not known. They are set in Britain after World War I ended in 1918. One of the stories, "The Gylston Slander", contains action dated August 12, 1919. They were collected in book form as Malcolm Sage Detective in 1921, so perhaps they appeared in magazines circa 1919 - 1920. Jenkins self-published all his books, an unusual procedure for the day. Many of his other works, such as the Bindle series, were humorous tales.

 

Jenkins' work has some similarities to R.Austin Freeman's. Malcolm Sage, like Thorndyke, is a private investigator; he is hired by the insurance companies, similar to the arrangement in Thorndyke's books. Sage, like Thorndyke, emphasizes photography in his work. He is also skeptical of fingerprints. Most of the clues he follows up on in his cases fall within the parameters of Freeman's world. He deduces things from maps, in "The Surrey Cattle-Maiming Mystery", reminding one of Freeman's "31 New Inn" (1911) - and Borges' "Death and the Compass" (1944). In "The Strange Case of Mr. Challoner", he makes deductions from the medical evidence left behind on the body. "A Lesson in Deduction" shows what can be learned from footprints. While Sage uses medical and physical evidence in his detective work, he is less scientific than Thorndyke: he does not attempt to use cutting edge science, or go as deeply into the world of science as Freeman does. "The McMurray Mystery" deals with the murder of a scientist in his laboratory, and looks at the implications of longevity research on modern civilization. The Sage stories tend to lack fair play. That is, the clues Sage notices about the corpse in "Challoner", for instance, are not shared during the course of the story with the reader. They are only set forth during Sage's final summing up. A similar lack of fair play has often been noted in some of Freeman's scientific stories. The reasoning based on these clues is often excellent, and forms a high point of the tales.

 

There is no sign of any Croftsian influence in Jenkins' book, such as police detectives or emphasis on routine; this lack of influence is not surprising, given the publication date of just one year after Crofts' debut in The Cask (1920).

 

As Sage points out, he is sometimes more interested in setting traps for the villain, than in detecting his original crime. This is true in the best of these tales, "The Surrey Cattle-Maiming Mystery" and "The Stolen Admiralty Memorandum". This gives a flavor of the inverted story to these two works. More ingenuity is expended in the net spread to catch the criminal, than on the original crime itself. These traps often involve considerable social comedy.

 

"Challonner" could be a model for Christie's "Dead Man's Mirror". Both are locked room stories, both have mechanical solutions, both have a similar floor plan and approach. The article on Christie also suggests that the Sage tales influenced the framework of her Partners in Crime (1924).

 

Bibliography

 

 

John Dene of Toronto (1920) - short stories

Malcolm Sage, Detective (1921) - short stories

The Stiffsons and Other Stories (1928)- contains at least one short story featuring Malcolm Sage

 

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