This book, originally published in Czech in 1973, is based on an amusing literary conceit. Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, an English Catholic priest and important early 20th-century theologian, was also a distinctive figure in the development of the genre of detective fiction. A pretty fair writer of detective stories himself, he also (for instance) wrote a humorous essay in which he portrayed Sherlock Holmes as an actual historical figure—thereby setting off an entire movement of hilarious pseudoscience that continues to this very day. Further, in 1929 Father Knox issued his “Ten Commandments” for what is and is not permissible in a detective story. It is these commandments that form the core of Josef Skvorecký’s book.
The commandments include such rules as: “No more than one secret room or passage is allowable in any one story” (III); “Nothing is allowable that requires a long scientific explanation at the end” (IV); “No Chinaman must figure in the story” (V: this was Knox’s annoyed reaction to one of the most hackneyed ploys in cheap detective stories of the 20’s); “The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the reader” (VIII); “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (X). Knox’s intent was to improve the writing of detective fiction. Skvorecký’s intent, in a series of ten stories, is to violate each and every one of Knox’s commandments, as a form of homage.
All ten stories center around the adventures of Eve Adam, a Czech nightclub singer and amateur sleuth. The stories follow her path from Prague, through Western Europe, to the United States, and then back to Prague again: all part of her service for the Czech State Concert Agency.
The heart of the book is not, however, the chief character herself but the sequence of puzzles that Skvorecký presents to us. These are pretty enjoyable: a murder in the Prague film industry, another one along an Italian highway, hanky-panky in a Swedish hotel, a kidnapping in the Department of Mathematics at Berkeley. And in each story, Skvorecký inserts the delightfully infuriating device of a notice at a certain point informing the reader that he now has all the information necessary to solve the crime—and also to detect what sin against Father Knox’s commandments Eve has perpetrated. I solved only one of the ten crimes; and determining which commandment had been broken, while occasionally fairly easy, is at other times devilishly difficult, since Skvorecký is (of course) a subtle writer. Luckily, he includes at the back of the book the solutions both to the mysteries themselves and to the writing sins committed in each story.
Occasionally it seems clear why Father Knox devised a commandment. Thus the story set in the mathematics department at Berkeley dissolves into an (intentionally) stupefying sequence of scientific graphs, each with an interminable explanation from one of the characters. Another story, set on board an ocean liner, contains not only a Chinese murderer but a Japanese victim, and gets them both into the plot via a series of unbelievable historical coincidences. At other times, however, Skvorecký proves his mettle by having Eve arrive at a solution to a mystery in a way which is completely satisfying to the reader even though a sin is committed against Father Knox.
Translated from Czech in lively fashion by K.P. Henley, Sins for Father Knox is certainly good bedtime reading for a couple of nights. But having said this, I must also say that I expected more than mildly diverting entertainment from a writer of the stature of Josef Skvorecký. This book hardly measures up to the stories collected in The Bass Saxophone, let alone to the great novel The Engineer of Human Souls. Of course, one of the benefits of having settled in the West is that Skvorecký no longer has to devote his attention continually to important issues of political and emotional life; and one can hardly blame him for wanting to take a break from his usual themes. Serious literature is possible in the detective genre, but for that one should turn to the dark novels of James Ellroy.
[Sins for Father Knox, by Josef Skvorecký (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.) 268 pp., $17.95]
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