As happens with more of the books I review here than I like, this was not the book I had planned to read following Erasure by Percival Everett, which I picked up having seen its recent (and very good) film adaptation American Fiction in theaters back in January. (By the way, I wholeheartedly recommend both book and movie.) But, as fate would have it, my eyes noticed this slim volume peeking out ever so slightly in the fiction section of my local library, and having thus remembered that this was actually a book that existed, I really had no choice but to check it out, now did I? As such, I thought I’d honor Tom Sawyer, Detective with a review here since it’s actually an intriguing little volume.
The trouble in reviewing this title is that I want to mainly critique it from a GAD standpoint, or as is the case here (with a publish date of 1896) from a pre-GAD standpoint… but I find myself forced to view this novella as part of the oeuvre of one of America’s all-time greatest authors. We are, after all, dealing with the man who wrote Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is considered by many to be the Great American Novel. Of course its themes relating to race (and its controversial use of racial slurs) is what most people remember it for, but some of the scenes from Huck Finn – mainly the feud between the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons, and the uproar caused by the King and Duke – still stick with me today. When I read this in high school English I even wrote a paper for class about how the lighthearted and childish nature of the third act, once Tom arrives and hatches a plot to free Jim, actually serves to show Huck’s growth as a character in seeing past race, and to this today I am still VERY proud of that paper. (It’s second only to my previously mentioned paper on how Iago had the hots for Othello.) Twain’s gift was that he could mix his mastery of comedy with an ability to discuss many of the problems he saw in the American society of his time, as well as eschewing the line between literature for children and adults. Tom Sawyer, Detective, is not quite on the level of sophistication that the first two novels in its series are; as a matter of fact it’s essentially a pastiche of the burgeoning genre of detective fiction.
The novella is a direct continuation of the previous books, and begins as Tom and Huck (sans Jim) are invited back to the Arkansas farm owned by Tom’s Uncle Silas and Aunt Sally (where that infamous final act of Huckleberry Finn occurs.) It turns out that Silas, the town preacher, has found both his reputation and his church’s attendance rates at a low point because of an ongoing spat between himself and a neighbor, Brace Dunlap. Brace is a 30-something widow who wants to marry Silas’ daughter Benny, and Silas disapproves of the possible match due to the notable age gap. In an effort to make amends, Silas has hired Brace’s younger no-good brother Jubiter (whose nickname comes from a mole on his thigh) to do work around the farm, but has only ended up getting in heated argument with him as well. And so, Tom and Huck find themselves heading back to Arkansas on a ferry-boat going down the Mississippi – a much nicer ride than the ramshackle raft from Huck’s earlier adventure.
It’s on this boat that the mystery first lays out. Tom and Huck discover that a mysterious and reclusive passenger in the room next to them on the boat is in fact Jake Dunlap – a con-man and Jubiter’s twin brother long thought to be dead – and that he is hiding from his compatriots in a diamond-theft scheme after he cunningly ran off with the goods all to himself. Jake’s partners-in-crime are on the boat as well, and Jake plans to make a run for it back home so as to avoid certain death at their hands. During a routine maintenance stop Jake puts his plan into action with some help from his young new friends, and on departing at their intended station Tom and Huck are on the lookout for Jake along the path to Silas’ farm. Suddenly, they hear a piercing scream and two men running away from a nearby forest, and after hearing some passerby comment on a third mysterious figure wandering around, they come across the “ghost” of Jake Dunlap, the sight of which is scary enough for them to hide out in their bedrooms for the rest of the night.
Of course it is obvious that this is not Jake Dunlap’s ghost, but Tom and Huck’s belief otherwise and their gradual realization of the truth allows for Twain to showcase the intersection between humor and detection which really makes this book shine. To put it bluntly, Twain casts Tom as the Sherlock and Huck as the Watson, which, if you’ve read the first two books in the series, makes a lot of sense character-wise: Tom has an innate sense of perception and human nature beyond his youth (best seen in the brilliant reverse psychology scene from the beginning of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer) and Huck is, well, not always the sharpest tool in the shed. Ultimately, however, they are both children, and so at times superstition and innocence outweigh observation and ratiocination. As such, many of the scenes where Tom makes an important leap in logic are quite humorous:
“Lordy, Tom, don’t talk so! If you was to holler at it I’d die in my tracks.”
“Don’t you worry, I ain’t going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it’s a-scratching its head—don’t you see?”
“Well, what of it?”
“Why, this. What’s the sense of it scratching its head? There ain’t anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like that, and can’t itch. A fog can’t itch; any fool knows that.”
“Well, then, if it don’t itch and can’t itch, what in the nation is it scratching it for? Ain’t it just habit, don’t you reckon?”
“No, sir, I don’t. I ain’t a bit satisfied about the way this one acts. I’ve a blame good notion it’s a bogus one—I have, as sure as I’m a-sitting here. Because, if it—Huck!”
“Well, what’s the matter now?”
“You can’t see the bushes through it!”
“Why, Tom, it’s so, sure! It’s as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to think—”
“Huck, it’s biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, they don’t chaw—they hain’t got anything to chaw with. Huck!”
“I’m a-listening.”
“It ain’t a ghost at all. It’s Jake Dunlap his own self!”
“Oh your granny!” I says.
Tom Sawyer, Detective, Chapter VIII: “Talking With the Ghost”
It’s hard to say that this is a story of pure detection when the main half-point revelation is “This guy we’ve seen wandering around isn’t actually a ghost!”, but nonetheless these kinds of scenes are the most fun in the whole novella and really solidify it as the pastiche it’s aiming to be.
Twain has effortlessly weaved the world of childish wonder and adult problems that Tom and Huck inhabit, and considering how perfectly he did this in the previous books, it’s no surprise. The secret to this wonderful juxtaposition lies in his control of both language and point of view. Despite all of the serious goings-on within these short pages, Twain never forgets that we are seeing it all through Huck’s eyes, eyes which have seen a lot of serious stuff but still retain much of the wonder and innocence of childhood. Take this line from the final chapter, in which Uncle Silas is put on trial for the Murder of Jubiter Dunlap (whose body is found late in the story):
They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and begun.
Tom Sawyer, Detective, Chapter XI: “Tom Sawyer Discovers the Murderers”
That simple misuse of one word creates one of the funniest moments in the whole novella, and it still serves to underscore the chasm between the events of the story and the character who is viewing them. This kind of dichotomy branches out to the whole work, as the whimsical adventures of Tom and Huck happen with a background of several crimes, a longstanding feud, and the rage that has pent up in the previously clerical Uncle Silas due to his fall from grace.
The actual mystery aspect of Tom Sawyer, Detective feels very pre-GAD, albeit not in a bad way. The jewel robbery that sets off most of the action is described after the fact in detail by Jake Dunlap, which leaves no suspense as to where the diamonds currently lie and who is chasing after Jake. Once Tom and Huck “discover” Jake’s “ghost”, there is a question of whether or not the screams they heard actually led to a murder. However, the immediate disappearance of Jubiter Dunlap leaves little room for question, and eventually a corpse is discovered (in quite a blunt fashion as well.) This leaves only a couple of chapters for the real meat and bones of the murder mystery, which essentially consists of the arrest of Uncle Silas and the trial. While I won’t overtly spoil anything, I feel safe in saying that it is extremely easy to see through the mystery here, especially the “twists” in the case that Twain has created. While, rather admirably, the solution does have a few different moving parts that gives it the feeling of a prototype to something whipped up at the end of a novel by Carr or Gardner, there are (unsurprisingly) almost no fair-play clues given to the reader, and the whodunit aspect is very obvious. It’s worth noting that the solution does predate a very famous twist most famously associated with a later Conan Doyle story. Also, while the final chapter is definitely engaging, it is rather melodramatic (you can almost hear the dun-dun-DUNNNN after every revelation,) and the idea of Tom Sawyer – a child – essentially running the defense of a murder trial is a bit beyond the suspension of disbelief. But it is here that I must remind myself that this is meant to be a silly pastiche aimed towards children, and not something on the same level as Huckleberry Finn or anything by Agatha Christie.
Overall this stands as a curious little nugget both in Mark Twain’s oeuvre and in the history of detective fiction. It’s not essentially memorable, but it still contains the hallmarks of Twain’s writing and some strands of detection that would slowly build its way into the Golden Age we all know and love. It’s definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in it, but I wouldn’t get too excited over it. It’s a fun romp with some slightly deeper themes, and not much else. I know there’s a film adaptation from the ’30s starring a young Mickey Rooney; I’ll have to check it out at some point.
Other Reviews:
CrimeReads (this article mentions the real 1626 Danish trial Twain was inspired by, leading to a claim he plagiarized an 1829 novel inspired by the same event, which was never translated into English)