There's something about reading a book about travelling around the islands of the Caribbees every morning in a packed train during rush hour in Tokyo...
T.S. Stribling (1881 - 1965) was an American author who wrote many adventure pulp stories. For the magazine Adventure, he wrote detective stories starring the psychologist sleuth Doctor Poggioli, who is the main detective in the 1929 short story collection Clues of the Caribbees: Being Certain Criminal Investigations of Henry Poggioli, Ph. D., in which the American doctor Poggioli is travelling through the Caribbees. His reputation as an accomplished amateur sleuth often precedes him, and as he makes his arrival on each new destination on his trip across the islands, he is often asked to assist in criminal investigations, as he has a knack of arriving just as some kind of mystery or other problem has occured that requires the mind of the great detective to solve.
I fist heard about this book from Norizuki Rintarou; he was talking about mystery fiction and mentioned this book as an example, and even spoiled a certain twist of one of the stories. The way he explained it sounded really silly, but as I was interpreting and not an active party in the conversation, I couldn't really ask him more about it. Fast-forward a few months, and I come across the Japanese translation of Clues of the Caribbees in a bookshop, which helped put it back on the to-read list again. And so I got started on the book (the English version, mind you) and yep, the thing Norizuki talked about was really as silly as he made it sound like!
I do have to warn you, this book is full of racist language. As you can guess, most of the racist language is spoken by the white population, aimed at the people of color, though basically everyone from any country gets something stereotypical thrown at them, including the Dutch. Still, most of the language is about the local people and while arguably, Poggioli is less racist and more progressive than most of the other people in this book, that's just a relative thing.
That said, I do think the book does offer interesting ideas and concepts to the reader of mystery fiction. While the book's story format of 'a great detective arrives at some new place, solves a crime there' seems familiar, Stribling is surprisingly already playing a lot with genre expectations and tropes in this 1929 book, and I can see why this book would have made an impression on Norizuki. Each story explores in a way the fallibility of the Great Detective, whether it's through an internal fault, or external causes, and some of the things Stribling pulls off here are honestly brilliant, even if the core mystery plots themselves are often rather simple in set-up and development.
The book opens with The Refugees, in which Poggioli is asked to assist in a murder investigation in Curacao, led by police insecptor Karel Heinsius. The Magnificent Pompalone is a deposed dictator of Venezuela, and the custom is to let these ex-dictators roam free in Willemstad until they leave forever, just to keep the peace. Pompalone stays in the excellent Hotel Saragossa. When Heinsius hears someone has died there, he fears for some kind of international scandal, but upon arrival, he learns it's the proprietor, Senor Grillet, who died. While an initial examination seems to suggest heart failure, the doctor found clues that indicate Grillet may have died because a connection between Pompalone and his deceased wife, mother of his dear daughter Hortensia. Because Pompalone and his secretary were the ones who ate breakfast with Grillet before he died, Heinsius has more than enough reason to suspect either or both these men, but what reason could they have for killing Grillet? As a who- and howdunnit, this story is well set-up. While the story is quite limited in terms of scale, with few suspects, Stribling manages to make this into a very memorable story by making excellent use of irony as a theme of the story. Irony plays a huge rule in the way the murder is committed, and irony plays as much a role in the way the story eventually ends.
After arrival on Martinique in The Prints of Hantoun, Henry Poggioli becomes friends with the Chevalier Gervais Antoinette Beauhart Marion de Creviceau, who also has an interest in the philosophic aspects of crime. The two hold different opinions regarding crime and decide to carry out a wager, which involves solving the first case to be brought forth to the police court of Fort-de-France. This happens to be a robbery in the Banque Nationale, and the two quickly start spewing deductions that seem to point at different directions. Which of the two will turn out to be right? This is a fun story in concept with two detectives trying to outsmart each other while trying to solve the mysterious bank robbery. The trail of false clues however doesn't always make internal sense, so while the overall beats of Poggioli vs Creviceau are fun, the story feels a bit underwhelming as an actual mystery story.
In Cricket, Poggioli is staying in Bridgetown, Barbados, where the American psychologist finds himself roped into a murder investigation that occured among the Britons on the island, after a game of cricket. The main suspect is on the run, but his mother begs Poggioli to prove his son innocent. The adventure Poggioli has from this point on is absolutely one to remember, though perhaps not for the reason you'd first suspect. The story builds on a logical manner, based on clues uncovered during Poggioli's inquiry, but the manner in which his deductions lead to the culprit is surprising, and it's basically a miracle that at the end of the story, he manages to leave the island knowing he solved the case in such a splendid manner, for at the mid-point, you really start to worry whether Piogolli can pull it off.
In the final story, A Passage to Benares, Poggioli arrives in Spain, Trinidad and ends up witnessing a Hindu wedding procession entering a temple. The sight is so magnificent, Poggioli for a second is reminded of the theory of Nirvana, and he suspects the temple's architect may have deliberately designed the building's curves, colors and planes to induce the viewer to achieve Nirvana. He decides to spend the night in the temple as an experiment. He is however shocked when he later learns the bride of the wedding procession he witnessed the day before, was found murdered at the temple this morning, making Poggioli a suspect. This is definitely the highlight of the book. The motive for the murder is incredibly original, and while it borders on the mad, it works for me. The way the story also deals with Poggioli as both a detective, and a suspect, in this story is also inspired, with a conclusion that is basically as crazy as the motive for the murder. The ending is sure to linger on in your mind for some time.
Anyway, there's a lot of racist stereotypes and language to go through, but if you can ignore that, Clues of the Caribbees: Being Certain Criminal Investigations of Henry Poggioli, Ph. D. honestly is a short story collection worth reading. While the individual stories might not always make an impression on the reader on their mystery merits alone, the way Stribling explores the tropes of the genre, especially those associated with the Great Detective, is impressive and memorable. The things he does here, are things you'd expect of a modern-day writer all immersed in meta-discussions on the detective genre, not someone who is mostly writing for pulp magazines in the 1920s. I for one am really interested in the other Poggioli stories now.
