Freeman, R Austin - Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke (1931)

This starts out with some entertaining mystery-adventures by a London teenager (Chapters 1, 2, 5), but it soon degenerates into another of Freeman's anti-Semitic diatribes, just like Helen Vardon's Confession and The D'Arblay Mystery. A few of Freeman's 1920's short tales are also disfigured by anti-Semitism, notably "The Stolen Ingots", which is a tale of shipboard adventure, not unlike the opening of Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke. I might add that I had no idea of this side of Freeman, when I first began to read him, and find these novels most discouraging. These three books are among Freeman's least reprinted, and one suspects that many people who have expressed enthusiasm for Freeman's better (and better-known) works are simply unaware of their existence, as I was when I wrote most of this Freeman essay.

Mike Grost