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A review by alexauthorshay
A Certain Dr Thorndyke by R. Austin Freeman
3.0
3.5 stars
This was a very unexpected read. I remember one of the previous novels starting out in third person and describing the events of the crime so the reader could better follow Thorndyke in his process. This one took that a step further, devoting half the book to the suspected criminal, and half to Thorndyke solving the crime. You never learn what Osmand actually did for a crime in his half of the book, only that he ran away from something and how he ends up avoiding being chased and arrested for it. A lot of it went over my head because it happened on a boat; so parts of the ship and the slang were meaningless for me. The second half doesn't bring up Osmand until the very end, and the reader is let in on about 75% of Thorndyke's thought processes. I thought this made the summary at the end redundant initially, but there are some things that Freeman didn't put in, requiring Thorndyke to further explain them. A very interesting format since it didn't focus on the actual crime itself in any way.
This was a very unexpected read. I remember one of the previous novels starting out in third person and describing the events of the crime so the reader could better follow Thorndyke in his process. This one took that a step further, devoting half the book to the suspected criminal, and half to Thorndyke solving the crime. You never learn what Osmand actually did for a crime in his half of the book, only that he ran away from something and how he ends up avoiding being chased and arrested for it. A lot of it went over my head because it happened on a boat; so parts of the ship and the slang were meaningless for me.