Boucher, Anthony – The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars (1940)

Mystery lovers who haven't read it will probably find The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars by Anthony Boucher a lot of fun. It combines bizarre situations, action, humor, lively and intelligent prose, and the advancement of several plausible solutions before the actual one is revealed.

Stephen Worth, ex-private detective turned hardboiled mystery novelist and sometime screenwriter under contract to Metropolis Pictures, is supposed to write a screen adaptation of “The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” which will be produced by F.X. Weinberg. When word of this makes the newspapers, Weinberg starts receiving irate letters from the Baker Street Irregulars. They want the screenplay entrusted to someone who reveres the Canon as they do, not a “rat,” as they refer to Worth, who writes hardboiled fare. For his part, Worth contemptuously dismisses the BSI as a bunch of “deductionists.”

The studio's publicity director, Maureen O'Breen, who has no liking for Worth, a heavy-drinking lecher and prankster, suggests that Weinberg simply take him off the film and assign another writer. When Weinberg tries to persuade Worth to work on a different project, Worth balks at the idea and points to a contractual clause that effectively prevents him from being replaced involuntarily. From his position between rock and hard place, Weinberg hits on a solution and sends letters to each of the five Irregulars who have written to him, inviting them to Hollywood at his expense to serve as advisors on the film. When they agree, the studio provides a house for them at 221B Romualdo Drive, complete with a housekeeper named Mrs. Hudson.

To help tout the film, Maureen plans a party for the press. On the afternoon of the party, Maureen, trying to coordinate the preparations at 221B, is besieged by mysterious callers, messages, and telephone calls. Once things are under way, Stephen Worth makes a drunken, belligerent appearance. When he tries to hit one of the Irregulars, his wild swing hits instead one of the guests, Lieutenant Jackson of the police department. Jackson knocks him cold and he and some others carry Worth to a room upstairs to sleep it off. That ends the party.

Later on, Maureen goes upstairs and finds a still drunk and abusive Worth standing in the doorway of the room. Moments later she hears a shot, blood blossoms under the hand Worth claps to his heart, and he falls back into the darkened room. When she bends to help him, something strikes the back of her head, rendering her unconscious. One of the Sherlockians carries her downstairs. When she revives and reports what's happened, Lieutenant Jackson goes to investigate. There's a lot of blood in the room. There are other significant things there, too. There just isn't any corpse.

The next day, each of the Irregulars has a peculiar, sometimes frightening adventure. Each adventure has its roots in a Holmes story, and each elicits information about another Irregular which he'd prefer not be revealed. The police and the Sherlockians thus have their hands full trying to unravel codes and ciphers, interpret the meaning of the adventures, and discover the whereabouts of Worth's body and the means by which it was removed from the house. There's a cover blurb from the New York Times Book Review on the paperback edition I have which reads, “Delightful...offers a surprise on nearly every page.”

This brings me to the only complaint I have about the book—the edition. Mine was published by Carroll & Graf. I'm not sure about the number of pages containing surprises, but this particular book must have been proofread by someone whose idea of intellectual activity is dwarf-tossing. Even by C&G standards, which generally seem to be abysmal in the typographical error department, this one qualifies for the Guinness Book of World Records. By all means read the book. Just avoid the Carroll & Graf edition if you have options.

—Barry Ergang, July 2003

Some day I plan to devise a way of rating mysteries according to their cleverness, like Sudoku puzzles. My first draft looks something like this:

Level 1. Mysteries with obvious clues.

Level 2. Mysteries with obvious clues which are overlooked due to the investigator(s)' ignorance.

Level 3. Mysteries with obvious clues which are hidden or confused due to arbitrary and unpredictable events.

Level 4. Mysteries in which the real clues have been obscured by the perpetrator.

Level 5. Mysteries in which false clues have been planted by the perpetrator.

Level 6. Mysteries in which false clues have been planted by others collaborating with the perpetrator.

Level 7. Mysteries in which false clues have been planted by others working independently of the perpetrator.

In other words, a reader dealing with a Level 7 mystery needs to work out:

a) What the clues are

b) That the clues are false

c) Who has planted the false clues

d) Why they have planted them and

e) Who has benefited from them

before they can answer f) Who was the murderer?

Obviously this schema needs work, but the point of this long preamble is to record my reaction to The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars. As Barry points out in his review, it's a cheerful romp with lots of in-jokes which most fans of Holmes and GAD will enjoy; but for me it falls down in plotting: Boucher, it seems, just wasn't capable of tying together the disparate threads of a complex mystery without calling on the services of a deliberate obfuscator. Of course an author can construct a baffling mystery if he has a protagonist who sets out to construct a baffling mystery; but so what? This is hardly fair play. BSI is presented as a Level 7 mystery which turns out to be a Level 3.

I might go on to complain that the protagonist's assistant shows a superhuman amount of talent and energy, and all the victims of the joke fulfil their predetermined roles far too complacently, but I have made my point. Boucher was obviously well-versed in the trappings of mystification, but he was unable or unwilling to devise a genuine mystery on which to use them.

Enjoyable, but far less than meets the eye.

Jon.

See also: http://at-scene-of-crime.blogspot.ca/2012/06/deer-deer-my-kingdom-for-deerstalker.html