Among the various genres and sub-genres of traditional mysteries, I suspect that few are as easily recognizable, for better or worse, than the Had I But Known mystery - HIBK, as it's generally abbreviated. Too often, the term is used as a disparaging assessment of a particular author's style. But when it is done properly, that type of mystery, in which a narrator reminds us repeatedly that if he or she had only been able to foresee these terrible events, he or she surely could have avoided some calamity, it can be extremely effective. Consider, for example, the book and the author generally credited with having invented the genre - The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart, first published in 1908, 111 years ago. It's available these days in a wide variety of formats (now being out of copyright protection); I gave it an audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast about eight years ago. In the context of my review, below, you may want to know that the edition I re-read was the one published by Dover Publications with an excellent introduction by mystery historian Douglas G. Greene. This edition appears to be back in print. At any rate, here's my review, edited a bit (as always):
- 0 -
“This is the story of how a middle-aged spinster lost her mind, deserted her domestic gods in the city, took a furnished house for the summer out of town, and found herself involved in one of those mysterious crimes that keep our newspapers and detective agencies happy and prosperous.”
That’s the opening sentence of a book which defined a mystery genre, written by a woman who went on to become quite possibly the most popular woman writer in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. It is the opening of The Circular Staircase, by Mary Roberts Rinehart. It first appeared in 1908, and it was Mary Roberts Rinehart’s first book. An elderly woman, along with her niece and nephew and some devoted servants, leases a summer house in the country. The house is anything but peaceful: there are nighttime intruders, murders, rumors of hidden rooms and a bank failure before the mystery is eventually solved. But what makes The Circular Staircase memorable and worth reading more than a century after it was written, is summed up in the phrase “Had I But Known.”
That’s the phrase that defines this kind of thriller-mystery genre, which really was created in this one book. Here’s an example of how it works: Our narrator and central character, Rachel Innes, is running down a long list of questions she cannot answer – something she does with considerable regularity every couple of chapters, mostly for the reader’s benefit in keeping the rather complicated story straight. But even in her questions, she cannot avoid the “Had I But Known” tag – as, for example, when she ponders a mysterious hole in the wall which appeared in one room of the house overnight. She muses:
If I had only known how to read the purpose of that gaping aperture what I might have saved in anxiety and mental strain!
Here’s another quote, a couple of chapters later:
As I look back, so many things are plain to me that I wonder I could not see at the time. It is all known now, and yet the whole thing was so remarkable that perhaps my stupidity was excusable.
Or this example, from quite early in the book, as our narrator ponders leaving this mysterious house and returning to the city:
if we had only stuck to that decision and gone back before it was too late!
In the hands of a lesser writer, that kind of thing quickly becomes irritating. But remember, please, that The Circular Staircase, Rinehart’s first published novel*, is generally considered to be the first book to use this technique, and it did so quite effectively. The technique is useful in opening up Rachel’s character to us, and making us care about the other characters as well. And by showing us the workings of our narrator’s mind, we learn other facts that both move the story forward and help to develop the characters who populate it. Writing about The Circular Staircase, crime fiction historian Douglas G. Greene notes that "Rinehart was the mistress of the eerie event, the unknown figure peering through a door, the creaking staircase, the horrors almost but not quite foreseen."
She is also a writer with a real knack for defining memorable characters. One striking example occurs as Rachel is looking at her nephew, Halsey, and she thinks:
there are few young fellows like Halsey – straightforward, honest and willing to sacrifice everything for the one woman. I knew one once, more than thirty years ago, who was like that: he died a long time ago. And sometimes I take out his picture, with its cane and its queer silk hat and look at it. But of late years it has grown too painful: he is always a boy – and I am an old woman. I would not bring him back if I could.
That’s a totally unexpected passage. It tells us volumes about Rachel Innes’s character – and it is, I think, quite beautifully done.
I do have to warn readers that this mystery was written in 1908, and they are going to find some antiquated racial attitudes and language that we find quite offensive today – particularly a patronizing attitude towards a couple of the old servants. Making allowances for the era in which it was written, the references really should not detract from the story.
The Circular Staircase was an enormous success at the time, and it has remained popular over the years. Douglas Greene notes that Rinehart and Avery Hopwood turned it into a play, called The Bat, and it has been made into three feature films, not to mention a 1960 television adaptation. It’s a fine thriller with a great deal of action – and, of course, all those eerie noises and inexplicable events that keep us turning the pages long past our bedtime. It’s available in a number of editions, including a few for eBooks – and it’s worth reading.
* [Actually, her first novel-length book, in 1906, The Man in Lower Ten, might count, but that was first serialized in pulp magazines; The Circular Staircase (which had been written earlier) really was her first, again according to Greene's introduction.]
- 0 -
You can listen to the original audio review by clicking here. Also, that Dover edition with the introduction by Douglas G. Greene is back in print and, I would argue, very much worth your while.
Next: Arrow Pointing Nowhere, by Elizabeth Daly.