The titular Wobble of Wobble to Death is a “Go As You Please Contest,” a sort of indoor walking/endurance challenge. They were “instituted by Sir John Ashtley in 1878, and became very popular on both sides of the Atlantic in the eighties.” It will come as no surprise to the curious reader that Lovesey had written before this book a profile of five long-distance runners, The Kings of Distance and "contributed to many sporting journals."
The Wobble in question takes place on a cold November week in 1879 at the Agricultural Hall in Islington, which has been turned into an indoor racetrack. The main draw is the competition between the arrogant Captain Erskine Chadwick and Charles Darrell, both champion runners. There are other present as well, from the ambitious first-timers and wannabe champions to the just plain weird, such as F. H. Mostyn-Smith, whose eccentric method of running conceals one of the more amusing motives I’ve seen in a mystery novel. Similarly to Keystone, Lovesey makes the race genuinely engaging and interesting. He’s a sharp writer, and while some of the runners blend together (three of them serve as a Greek chorus to the events), Lovesey makes his key characters distinct. I was honestly invested in the race, even though it’s about fifty pages before a body hits the floor.
The body in question is Darrell’s. During the second day of the race, Darrell is felled by what he thinks are bad cramps, but within the hour, he’s dead. At first, death is put down to tetanus—the Hall is normally used to store animals and Darrell walked barefoot with open blisters the day before—but by the end of the second day Sergent Cribb and Constable Thackery are on the scene. Darrell’s body was pumped full of strychnine. His trainer, Sam Monk, is the prime suspect, a suspicion that seems to be confirmed when he’s found gassed in one the makeshift huts for the runners and their trainers. But Cribb isn’t convinced.
Cribb and Thackary are a great detective duo. Cribb is amazingly lazy—he does two interviews before laying down for a nap in the dead man’s bed—but he has the quick wit and sharp eye we want from our great detectives, and a silver tongue to boot. Thackary is good too, plodding but not stupid, never keeping pace with Cribb but no more than a step behind. I see how these two became so popular. Lovesey gets some humor about how the race goes on even with two dead men in the background. Class is also a major factor in the race; Chadwick is only taking part in something so lowly because of the promise of a competition with Darrell. With him dead, the manager is forced to resort to bribery to get Chadwick to run with his lessers. Thackery is forced to take to the track himself to interrogate some of the suspects. Lovesey captures Victorian England perfectly, casually taking parts of this world that doubtless seemed alien then and mindboggling now—strychnine as a stimulant!—and introduces them with great ease, never bogging the reader down in his research. It’s a charming and fun book all the way through.
But most readers want to know how good the mystery is. I was satisfied with it. Lovesey pulls off a clever deception on the reader, but I can see some being slightly disappointed with the resolution. At the end of the day, this is a police procedural set in Victorian England, not an Agatha Christie pastiche, and the mystery reflects that. It’s well-clued and there are some nice bits of mystery—such as Monk’s “suicide note,” which he definitely wrote, much to Cribb’s mystification—as well as some good detection, but it’s not trying to be Ellery Queen.
But overall, I really liked this book. It’s a short but solid piece of historical fiction, worth reading for fans of this type of mystery. Recommended.
Other Reviews: Mysteries Ahoy!, In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel, Past Offenses, Tipping My Fedora, Beneath the Stains of Time.
