Williams, John Babbington - Leaves from the Note-Book of a New York Detective (1865)

Anticipating Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by more than 20 years, an American physician named John Babbington Williams was scribbling stories extolling the fictional exploits of James Brampton, a New York detective with uncanny gifts of observation and ratiocination. The collected stories were published in 1865 as Leaves from the Note-Book of a New York Detective (Westholme, paper, $14.95) and promptly lost a bundle for the publisher. Make no mistake: Dr. Williams hardly rivals Conan Doyle's intellectual brilliance, nor can he match Poe's felicitous style or Wilkie Collins's storytelling. But what a treat it is to make the acquaintance of a man who was probably the earliest American sleuth, a quick and cunning fellow who can outwit a gang of counterfeiters or see guilt in the most guileless face - and reads French besides. "Perhaps I have done more towards detecting crime than any other living man," he allows, with no false modesty.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/books/review/Crime-t.html?ref=books

Xavier Lechard.

John Babbington Williams is an American writer, known for his casebook collection Leaves from the Note-Book of a New York Detective: The Private Record of J. B. (collected 1865). The book contains thirty stories, and has recently been reprinted by Westholme Publishing.

The Introduction and first twelve tales, all deal with New York City police detective James Brampton. Brampton, who narrates the tales, solves a series of lively mysteries. Brampton stars in a few of the stories after this point, but most of the remaining tales are non-series stories.

Williams' tales fall into modern subgenres: detective stories, thrillers, courtroom dramas, medical mysteries. It is striking to see these subgenres so well-defined, at such an early date. There might be some mild SPOILERS ahead; the reader is urged to read these entertaining tales first, before proceeding.

Detective Stories

The best Brampton tales center on solid detection. Brampton is a genuine detective, who follows up on clues from the crime scene, the body, and facts about the deceased, to figure out the real story of the crime. It is admirable that ideas about detection and reasoning from evidence are so clearly thought through here, at such an early date.

In many of the Brampton tales, it is obvious to the modern reader whodunit right away. Maybe it was also clear to intelligent readers in 1865. The pleasure of such nicely done stories as "The Accusing Leaves" and "Stabbed in the Back" involves seeing Brampton using real sleuthing to establish the truth - rather than a whodunit puzzle. "The Knotted Handkerchief" is similar in its pure detection, but it introduces its killer at the end of the story. "The Bowie Knife Sheath" also features detective work in its first half, but this slow moving, somewhat lesser tale is stretched out with different kinds of storytelling. However, a few of the stories offer some plot surprises, as well as solid detection by Brampton. These might be the best pieces in the collection: "The Club Foot" and "The Lottery Ticket".

In "Stabbed in the Back", the detective finds a series of clues, that enable him to develop a profile of the killer. He learns three things that are probably true about the murderer: this allows him to search the small town, looking for a man who fits this profile. Such multi-clue profiles will play a prominent role in later detection fiction. See Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "Silver Blaze" (1892); Chapter 11 of E. C. Bentley's Trent's Last Case (1913). Such profiles will be regularly employed by Ellery Queen.

"The Accusing Leaves" and "The Knotted Handkerchief" show how evidence that first looks one way, can actually be made to support different conclusions, upon deeper examination by Brampton.

A rival detective, Mr. George Lewis, appears as a supporting character in "The Accusing Leaves" and "Stabbed in the Back". He is nowhere as good a sleuth as Brampton, and he makes an entertaining foil. Such rivals will also be popular in later crime fiction, for example Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Holmes tales. Lewis underscores Brampton's good detective procedure, by his own poorly done detective work.

Both Lewis and Brampton work for the same detective organization in New York. We sometimes hear Brampton talk about his detective chief. But unfortunately, Williams never takes us to the head office, or gives us other inside looks at the detective organization as a whole.

Medically-based Crimes

Some of the Brampton tales are accounts of medically-based crimes. These stories are not so good. Their medical detail can be grim; the medical ideas tend to be arbitrary, bending to the ends of the plot, rather than ingenious; the detection elements are weak. The medical tales include "The Silver Pin" and "The Defrauded Heir".

The Thrillers

As a change of pace Brampton also gets involved with some well-done thriller plots, in "The Struggle for Life", "The Masked Robbers" and "The Coiners". These thrillers typically involve a chase after criminals in a series of well-defined country locations, often in the American Midwest. They climax with the hero alone with bad guys, during a night at a remote country inn or run-down house. "The Night of Peril" is also mainly such a thriller, although it starts out with some solid detection at a crime scene, in the Brampton manner. Such pleasant, non-series stories as "An Adventure with Italian Brigands" and "An Adventure at an Inn" are in the same mode as the Brampton thrillers.

In "The Masked Robbers", the hero shows some ingenuity in setting a trap for the killers. In "The Coiners" and "The Night of Peril", the hero shows ingenuity in escaping from them at the end. "An Adventure at an Inn" has plot gambits that seem to derive from Wilkie Collins' "A Terribly Strange Bed" (1852).

Many of the Brampton tales take place in New York City. Typically they are set in what is today the Downtown (the far South) of Manhattan. Presumably, this was the main part of Manhattan in existence in those days. In the thriller "The Struggle for Life" and the medical "The Defrauded Heir", the detective disguises himself, and goes undercover as a crook in the Five Points district of Southern Manhattan. The Five Points clearly had a reputation as a criminal hangout in this era. But Williams does not paint the sort of extreme negative depiction of the Five Points neighborhood as a whole, that will later be seen in such lurid books as The Gangs of New York (1928) by Herbert Asbury. Williams simply shows criminals hanging out in its slum saloons. The Five Points-set finale of "The Defrauded Heir" is the most entertaining part of the otherwise grim medical story. (Eventually, in real-life, the Five Points slum was completely demolished. Today the area is the Foley Square district of lower Manhattan, home of imposing, official looking government buildings.)

Many of the thrillers take place in the American Midwest countryside. The heroine of "An Adventure at an Inn" takes the train to Wheeling, West Virginia, locale of the classic "Life in the Iron Mills" (1861) of Rebecca Harding Davis. From there, the heroine books passage on a steamship up the Ohio River to Wellsville, Ohio, right across the Ohio River from Hancock County, West Virginia, future locale of The Egyptian Cross Mystery (1932) by Ellery Queen. But most of the story takes place up the Ohio River from there, between Industry and Rochester, in Beaver County, Pennsylvania.

Courtroom Dramas

The book contains a few courtroom dramas. This genre seems already to be in existence at this early date. "My First Brief" makes satisfying theatrics, as the lawyer-narrator figures out whodunit, right in the courtroom. The detection unfortunately depends too much on coincidence and guesswork. It is not quite up to the best standards in the Brampton stories. Still, most readers will enjoy seeing a courtroom drama way-back-when. "The Bowie Knife Sheath" also features courtroom drama in its finale.

Poe and Impossible Crimes

Many Casebook writers published an imitation of Poe's locked room puzzle in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841). While reading Williams' book, I kept wondering if he would attempt such a mystery. Finally he did: "The Walker Street Tragedy" is a mildly-impossible crime, that shows a definite ancestry in Poe's work. Williams' ideas are related to - but distinctly different from - Poe's. Williams deserves credit for coming up with his own mystery solution.

By today's standards, "The Walker Street Tragedy" is simple as an impossible crime tale. I had no difficulty figuring out how the crime was committed. In Williams' day, it was probably creditable. Williams also includes a second impossible mystery, about the knife. It too is only mildly clever, compared to Carr and his successors.

The plot in "The Walker Street Tragedy" is related to Williams' "The Lottery Ticket". There is a reversal: the solution in "The Walker Street Tragedy" looks like the first, false ideas in "The Lottery Ticket" - while the solution in "The Lottery Ticket" looks a little bit like the first false idea in "The Walker Street Tragedy". Walker Street seems to be in what is now known as the TriBeCa district of New York City: another Williams story set in lower Manhattan.

The Introduction

The Introduction to the book essentially consists of two short stories. One describes how the writer Williams allegedly met and befriended James Brampton. The second half is a mystery that Brampton solved - basically, just another Brampton case, and one of his weakest. The first half of the introduction is better. It shows Brampton turning his sleuthing powers, to deducing facts about passerby. This recalls Dupin's feats in Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841), and anticipates the famous deductions of Sherlock Holmes about his visitors.

Paranormal Detective Stories

Today, in the new millennium, there is a deplorable interest in supernatural and paranormal elements fused with detective fiction. I hate this! The supernatural and paranormal are a load of crap, and have no place in a genre like detective fiction, which emphasizes mysteries solved by human reason. In any case, such stories are nothing new. Williams includes a non-series mystery, "The Broken Cent", which has a paranormal element, a so-called "lucky coin" (something that only exists in fiction, one might add). Up until its finale, "The Broken Cent" is a pleasant detective story. Its hero reconstructs the crime, using the same solid detection James Brampton uses in other stories. Then, at the end, the criminal is identified following the trail of luck produced by the coin. This is a cheat of a finale.

"The Broken Cent" benefits from some nice travel writing, showing the city of Baltimore. Baltimore also appears in "The Lottery Ticket".

Crime Stories

"Mr. Sterling's Confession" is unusual in the book, in that it is mainly a straightforward account of a crime, in the form of a confession by the criminal. The story shows what "white collar crime" was like back then, as perpetrated by a businessman. The tale has added interest, in that the victim was Brampton's father, thus filling out some of Brampton's life history.

Mike Grost