R. Austin Freeman: Classic Mystery Creator of Dr. Thorndike

R. Austin Freeman had several things in common with his famous peer of classic mystery. He had a medical degree and turned to writing as a second career. His London-based detective was based on a real person that the author knew, and his character's investigations were based on logic, reason, and facts. The difference was that Dr. John Thorndike was the doctor in the detective-biographer paradigm, instead of the biographer. As such, Thorndike was never accused of being an amateur by the police like Sherlock Holmes sometimes was by Scotland Yard.

Furthermore, because Thorndike was a doctor, readers were treated to in depth forensic medical procedures in the solution to the cases. Every single experiment the audience ever reads in a Thorndike mystery is real. Freeman tested every experiment to see if the solution were true to life. If the experiment failed, it didn't make it into the mystery he was writing, and another solution was required. Thus, if you had access to the proper equipment, time, and effort, you could carry out the experiment yourself.

Finally-unlike Dr. Watson, we rarely hear about any time that Jervis is away from Dr. Thorndike or his home life. It's as if his life closes off between the times he is with the doctor. Whether this was because Freeman only wanted Jervis as a sidekick to fit the paradigm or because he just found Thorndike more interesting without the distraction of a fleshed out biographer is difficult to say. There is far more written by and about Doyle and his relationship with Holmes than there is regarding Freeman and his relationship with Thorndike.

The first Dr. Thorndike/Jervis novel was The Red Thumb Mark, published in 1907. In it, the primary evidence against the main suspect are fingerprints in the safe. But the real culprit had access to the suspect's fingerprints. And Dr. Thorndike was able to prove that as long as you have access to a genuine fingerprint and the proper materials, it is possible to forge a fingerprint and frame an innocent person. Meanwhile, trying to be too fancy will give the forgery away.

Dr. Thorndike and Jervis remain the only contemporaries of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson who continue to have a strong faithful following. However, it is much harder to find copies of Freeman's novels than it is to find those of Doyle's for people who love to have a printed book in their hands-a real book.  As for the writer himself, you cannot even find a photograph of Dr. Freeman on Wikimedia Commons. However, collections of Thorndike short stories and novellas are available and you can usually find them individually in anthologies of various authors or online. .

The Inverted Mystery has become a popular form through television. The late, great Peter Falk starred as Lt. Columbo in the 1970s in a series of inverted murders where the killer is played by a famous actor or actress. We see the killer prior to the crime interacting with the future victim and learn why the guest star has to kill the intended victim. We see the killer plan the crime, carry out the crime, and then try to hide the crime. Only then do we see Columbo enter the story. We watch him investigate and sift through the facts of the case and solve the murder. The murderer is always caught.

Inverted mysteries did not start in television, but in print stories written by R. Austin Freeman. He wanted to write a series of mysteries where we see the criminal commit a crime, then see Dr. Thorndike solve the crime. In one particularly baffling case-at first, that is, Thorndike was able to prove that the skeleton in a burned down house was not that of the supposed victim, but that of a different person. Thorndike could tell from the shape and condition of the skeleton that

a) the bones were not only too old to be of a recently deceased person, but that

b) while the supposed victim was a young healthy white man, the skeleton was that ofan African woman of the lower classes.

Unfortunately, the inverted mystery was a failure in print form. No one wanted to know the solution to the crime before the detective entered the picture. People wanted to try and outwit the detective first. Eventually, Freeman abandoned the inverted mystery.