Today, Christina Koning continues her discussion of blind detectives: 'The
stories collected in Clinton H Stagg’s The Problemist (1915), about New
York detective Thornley Colton, are no less entertaining than Bramah’s Carrados
tales — and no less improbable, as regards their protagonist’s extraordinary
powers of perception. Although blind from birth, Colton has an uncanny ability
to describe someone he has never met from seemingly inconsequential details — the
colour of a woman’s dress is correctly guessed, on the principle that ‘all
stout women who breathe asthmatically wear purple’ and so on.
John
Fergusons’s The Man in the Dark (1928) offers a more plausible account
of blindness, as its central character, blinded war veteran Sandy Kinloch,
finds himself an unwitting witness to the murder of a campaigning journalist. I
liked the fact that the novel begins in a London pea-souper (as mine does) —so
that the reader isn’t at first made aware that Kinloch is blind. The emphasis
on what he can hear, touch and smell adds realism to the portrayal too.
Then
there is Bruce Alexander’s Blind Justice (1994) about the eighteenth
century magistrate (and brother of Henry Fielding), Sir John Fielding, whose
blindness — in this story at least — does not prevent him from solving a
complicated locked room murder mystery. In this, he is assisted by Jeremy
Proctor, an orphaned boy who acts as his ‘eyes’. The wonderful historical
detail in this book, the first of a series about Fielding, makes it well worth
reading — as does its convincing portrayal of the central character’s
blindness.
There
have been blind detectives in cinema and television, too. In the 1971 TV series, Longstreet , set
in New Orleans, the eponymous detective, played by James Franciscus, solves
crimes — including the murder of his wife — with the assistance of a white
German Shepherd called Pax. More recently, Blind Detective (2013),
described as a ‘Hong-Kong Chinese action crime/ romantic comedy film’, starring
Andy Lau as a blind detective who makes a living solving cold cases, shows that
stories about differently-abled detectives still continue to intrigue.' Christina's new book, Murder
at Bletchley Park, the eighth book in the Blind Detective
series, is published by Allison and Busby. I'd also like to take this opportunity to mention the books of Vicki Goldie, the Secretary of the CWA, which include Blind Witness and Blind Pool .
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