The First Detective Novel --- Ever!



The Notting Hill Mystery [by] Charles Warren Adams

[London; The British Library, 2012]

978-0-7123-5859-0 [$15.00]

This smallish tome represents the very first full-length detective novel ever published, according to the book’s introduction, bridging the gap between Poe’s short stories [“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was published in 1841.] and the prodigious The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins [1868].  This title was first published in 8 parts in Once a Week magazine beginning on November 29, 1862.  It was later published as a book in 1865 by Saunders, Otley & Co. of London, and it is the pages of that book which are recreated here by the British Library, but including the illustrations by George du Maurier [the grandfather of Daphne], which appeared in the magazine version.

The original was published under the name of Charles Felix. Felix only wrote a couple of other books, which are thoroughly unremarkable – one now exists in only 4 copies.  But it took some real detective work to figure out who Felix was, since there was nothing in the archives of the publisher – no correspondence between author and publisher exists.  The bottom line is that there didn’t need to be any.  Charles Felix is actually Charles Warren Adams, the publisher, who had, of course, no reason to write to himself!

Apparently, Adams had both legal training and a religious bent, and these show up in this story.  His book is profoundly moral:  it asks not only why and how evil exists, but also what is to be done about it.  The author’s law school training underlies the novel’s evidentiary process, which so wowed Julian Symons back in 1972, when he wrote Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel, one of the best-known critical works in the field of crime fiction. He admitted that the book “quite bowled me over.”

The plot is fairly straight-forward. The wife of Baron R** dies after sleep-walking down the stairs into her husband’s home laboratory and drinking a bottle of acid. It looks like a tragic accident, until a private investigator, Ralph Henderson, notices that the Baron took out five life insurance policies on Madame R**, worth a staggering £25,000! Hired by an insurance company, Henderson enters into a maze of intrigue that is perfectly Victorian, with a diabolical mesmerist, kidnapping by gypsies, a mysterious carnival with odd, secretive characters, slow poisonings, and a rich uncle’s will. Oh, and murder – actually, three murders.

Source documents compiled by insurance investigator Ralph Henderson are used to build a case against Baron R**. Although the baron's guilt is clear to the reader even from the outset, how he did it remains a mystery. Finally this is revealed, but how to catch him becomes the final challenge, for he seems to have committed the perfect crime.

The evidence against the Baron is presented as Henderson’s own findings — diary entries; family letters; depositions of servant girls, other roomers in the house, police officers, etc.; a chemical analyst’s report;  and a crime scene map.  These were such innovations at the time, and wouldn’t gain currency again until the 1920s.

It’s quite a joy to read this book, which is so modern, and yet so of its own time as well.  While the culprit is known at the outset, the thoroughness and tenacity of the investigator, and the materials he amasses, are a joy to see.  Highly recommended. ~ lss-r

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Library book.