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A review by cardica
The Floating Admiral by John Rhode, Clemence Dane, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie, The Detection Club, Ronald Knox, G. D. H. Cole, G.K. Chesterton, Henry Wade, Edgar Jepson, Milward Kennedy, Margaret Cole, Victor L. Whitechurch, Freeman Wills Crofts
2.0
Coming in 12th place, our least recommended novel for the year is [b:The Floating Admiral|719399|The Floating Admiral|The Detection Club|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1324235251l/719399._SY75_.jpg|2742444]. A short affair written by some of history’s most illustrious detective fiction authors, The Floating Admiral is a good experiment long, long before it is a good story. The question is - is it still worth reading?
Featuring the writings of [a:Agatha Christie|123715|Agatha Christie|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1589991473p2/123715.jpg], [a:G.K. Chesterton|7014283|G.K. Chesterton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1365860649p2/7014283.jpg], [a:Dorothy L. Sayers|8734|Dorothy L. Sayers|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1519840173p2/8734.jpg], and more, including our dearly beloved Father [a:Ronald Knox|8178205|Ronald Knox|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1559138706p2/8178205.jpg], the Floating Admiral was a dinner party experiment for Christie and her 13 friends to see if they could write a novel with no planned ending, one chapter at a time, as each author passed the buck to the other with no explanation other than what was on the page before them. Only the final chapter and the prologue were written with the full context of the story, and each author was challenged to write their solution in a sealed envelope, printed at the back of the book.
The solutions section of the book is really the best part, too. From wildly absurd solutions by Agatha Christie (whose solution, is definitely not worth the price of admission, despite what some reviewers might tell you), to clinically cold breakdowns of the manner of the problem itself by Ronald Knox, the solutions feel like a crime-fiction horoscope, and whichever one you end up aligning yourself with could point you in the direction of the next author you should check out.
[a:The Detection Club|93130|The Detection Club|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] remains to this day one of the great institutions of British crime fiction writing. Founded by [a:Anthony Berkeley|246785|Anthony Berkeley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1408927615p2/246785.jpg] in 1928, it began as informal dinners between the greats of detective fiction until its 1932 charter seated GK Chesterton as the first chairman. The Floating Admiral is the first of a number of pass-the-buck stories by the early detection club, each a variation on the same experiment. The greatest strength of the novel is that if you’re into mystery fiction, it’s a fantastic demonstration on how different the solutions to one single mystery can be, proving that in such a situation there is no ‘one answer’ to hunt for. While that thesis might be short-sighted given how atypical this novel is, there’s still a great value to seeing all these great minds approaching the same problem in such varied ways.
The story itself sits on the very edge of forgettable. While there are moments of greatness, they each feel so disconnected and ordinary as a part of the whole that the only thing I remembered months after reading it was the final twist. Our Detective Inspector Rudge being the prime example. After the great Admiral Penistone is found dead in a boat along his hometown river, Rudge is called in to solve the murder and somehow manages to have so little character that Ronald Knox’s chapter opens by bemoaning his blandness in character. As we trapse from clue to clue, author to author, the momentum of the story is kept up by juicy clues left at the end of each chapter, many of which are abandoned in due course. Despite setting out with the goal that ‘no author shall unnecessarily complicate matters’, each author seems to ridicule clues left by their predecessors, choosing to introduce new problems that in turn become points of ridicule until the conclusion has so many clues to cherry pick from that you could build an entire franchise of endings from (which, mind you, is exactly what you’ll find after the ending, so maybe it worked as intended).
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the narrative is looking at how it twists and turns from author to author - after the entire introduction was staged in Hong Kong, it takes 5 chapters for the story to even mention it again, and as long as you know what you’re getting into, it’s an excellent game trying to piece together where the ideas in the story were first introduced, as you barrel towards Anthony Berkeley’s final chapter, which itself is nearly a third the length of the book to ensure it can adequately clean up the mess the other authors made.
Full of old stereotypes and innumerable clues that are just wasted ink in your notepad, the story hasn’t aged well, unless you are thoroughly and entirely invested in its premise. It’s a shame too, because I think if the book had been done in two passes - one to outline the narrative and pose solutions, and the other to write it, the result would have been infinitely stronger, without entirely undermining the premise. Fortunately the modern detection club is around to give it another whack with the spiritual successor “[b:The Sinking Admiral|27881737|The Sinking Admiral|The Detection Club|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459724098l/27881737._SY75_.jpg|47876033]”, but the truth is that “The Floating Admiral” is a book for mystery fiction nerds and academics. You won’t regret reading it, but it never quite feels the same spark that each author had on their own, so you’d really be better of just sinking, or floating, as the case may be, into one of their other works.
I give this book 1 insurmountable detective fiction author out of 14. It’s an entirely missable book but I genuinely hope it’s not forgotten by history. You can catch our full thoughts on the book over on Death of the Reader.
Featuring the writings of [a:Agatha Christie|123715|Agatha Christie|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1589991473p2/123715.jpg], [a:G.K. Chesterton|7014283|G.K. Chesterton|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1365860649p2/7014283.jpg], [a:Dorothy L. Sayers|8734|Dorothy L. Sayers|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1519840173p2/8734.jpg], and more, including our dearly beloved Father [a:Ronald Knox|8178205|Ronald Knox|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1559138706p2/8178205.jpg], the Floating Admiral was a dinner party experiment for Christie and her 13 friends to see if they could write a novel with no planned ending, one chapter at a time, as each author passed the buck to the other with no explanation other than what was on the page before them. Only the final chapter and the prologue were written with the full context of the story, and each author was challenged to write their solution in a sealed envelope, printed at the back of the book.
The solutions section of the book is really the best part, too. From wildly absurd solutions by Agatha Christie (whose solution, is definitely not worth the price of admission, despite what some reviewers might tell you), to clinically cold breakdowns of the manner of the problem itself by Ronald Knox, the solutions feel like a crime-fiction horoscope, and whichever one you end up aligning yourself with could point you in the direction of the next author you should check out.
[a:The Detection Club|93130|The Detection Club|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] remains to this day one of the great institutions of British crime fiction writing. Founded by [a:Anthony Berkeley|246785|Anthony Berkeley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1408927615p2/246785.jpg] in 1928, it began as informal dinners between the greats of detective fiction until its 1932 charter seated GK Chesterton as the first chairman. The Floating Admiral is the first of a number of pass-the-buck stories by the early detection club, each a variation on the same experiment. The greatest strength of the novel is that if you’re into mystery fiction, it’s a fantastic demonstration on how different the solutions to one single mystery can be, proving that in such a situation there is no ‘one answer’ to hunt for. While that thesis might be short-sighted given how atypical this novel is, there’s still a great value to seeing all these great minds approaching the same problem in such varied ways.
The story itself sits on the very edge of forgettable. While there are moments of greatness, they each feel so disconnected and ordinary as a part of the whole that the only thing I remembered months after reading it was the final twist. Our Detective Inspector Rudge being the prime example. After the great Admiral Penistone is found dead in a boat along his hometown river, Rudge is called in to solve the murder and somehow manages to have so little character that Ronald Knox’s chapter opens by bemoaning his blandness in character. As we trapse from clue to clue, author to author, the momentum of the story is kept up by juicy clues left at the end of each chapter, many of which are abandoned in due course. Despite setting out with the goal that ‘no author shall unnecessarily complicate matters’, each author seems to ridicule clues left by their predecessors, choosing to introduce new problems that in turn become points of ridicule until the conclusion has so many clues to cherry pick from that you could build an entire franchise of endings from (which, mind you, is exactly what you’ll find after the ending, so maybe it worked as intended).
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the narrative is looking at how it twists and turns from author to author - after the entire introduction was staged in Hong Kong, it takes 5 chapters for the story to even mention it again, and as long as you know what you’re getting into, it’s an excellent game trying to piece together where the ideas in the story were first introduced, as you barrel towards Anthony Berkeley’s final chapter, which itself is nearly a third the length of the book to ensure it can adequately clean up the mess the other authors made.
Full of old stereotypes and innumerable clues that are just wasted ink in your notepad, the story hasn’t aged well, unless you are thoroughly and entirely invested in its premise. It’s a shame too, because I think if the book had been done in two passes - one to outline the narrative and pose solutions, and the other to write it, the result would have been infinitely stronger, without entirely undermining the premise. Fortunately the modern detection club is around to give it another whack with the spiritual successor “[b:The Sinking Admiral|27881737|The Sinking Admiral|The Detection Club|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1459724098l/27881737._SY75_.jpg|47876033]”, but the truth is that “The Floating Admiral” is a book for mystery fiction nerds and academics. You won’t regret reading it, but it never quite feels the same spark that each author had on their own, so you’d really be better of just sinking, or floating, as the case may be, into one of their other works.
I give this book 1 insurmountable detective fiction author out of 14. It’s an entirely missable book but I genuinely hope it’s not forgotten by history. You can catch our full thoughts on the book over on Death of the Reader.