FFB: The Doctor's First Murder - Robert Hare

THE STORY: Dr. Amos Truppen meticulously plans the death of Henry Updike in order to steal his formula for a medicine that supposedly can cure cancer. Truppen feels that if he can get that formula he'll be a very wealthy man. On the day of the murder Truppen stages a car accident and does everything according to his elaborate plan. But when the time comes to the actual murder Truppen discovers his intended victim is already dead, killed in exactly the same bizarre manner that Truppen had planned. Who got there first? But more importantly -- who knew of Truppen's plan and why did they kill Updike in exactly the same manner?

THE CHARACTERS: Like many other crime novels that detail the plans of a murder gone awry The Doctor's First Murder is told entirely from the viewpoint of the killer. Amos Truppen is disillusioned with his practice, less than satisfied with his partner Dr. Claude Dastin and eager to find a way to improve his reputation and position in town as one of only two physicians. We think that the story will be about Truppen and the way he will elude detection and get away with his ostensibly "perfect crime."  But when he is outwitted by another killer we see the novel transform immediately into an engaging suspense novel with some very good detective work both on Truppen's part and other characters.

Dastin, his physician partner, is highly suspicious of the accident and points out some odd details like the roofing tile nail supposedly causing a blowout that led to the car crashing into an oak tree and killing Updike.  Dastin points out that no houses anywhere on Updike's route had been recently repaired and that no one in town had a roof repair in years. Where did the new nail come from and how did Updike accidentally drive over it? Of course this was part of Truppen's plan to make it appear that the car had an accident. The reader knows this having watched Truppen drive the nail into the tire with a hammer after he let the car coast in neutral into the tree and crash there. This is only the first sign that Truppen's plan was not as perfect as he envisioned. Updike's apparent cause of death involves a broken glass vial that stabbed him and this also raises questions. When the body is exhumed Truppen really begins to sweat.

The bulk of the novel is an excellent portrait in guilt commingled with paranoia. Truppen is an intelligent and shrewd man and is determined not to be tried and executed for a crime that he may have planned but that someone else carried out. However, he is not immune to fear. He finds himself haunted, losing sleep and dwelling repeatedly on a paranoid refrain in his imagination: "I'm caught! I'm caught! I'm caught!"  The story becomes a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as Truppen matches wits with his unknown antagonist. He focuses first on Dastin who seems to stumble on clues too easily, but Dastin's long visit with Sir Jeremy Henders gives him an alibi for the night of Updike's death.  Truppen then sets his eyes on Updike's wife, Rascha, a research scientist who helped her husband create and improve the formula.

The introduction of Meino Voss into the story allows Hare to address the question of Fate. Voss is a composer and was Updike's only patient receiving the secret medicine that had been doing miraculous wonders. But Voss is a melancholy man and his latest composition, a symphony inspired by his impending death from a terminal illness, is a dark and brooding piece of music.  He talks to Truppen about how he is trying capture in sound and tone the quality of Nemesis, expounding on both the Greek mythological figure and its place in his music. The names of Fate and Nemesis as well as their shared concepts and role in Truppen's life will recur throughout the novel until the staggering and ironic finale.

INNOVATIONS: The Doctor's First Murder (1933) seems at first to be an inverted detective novel from the very first sentence. The ingenious surprise at the end of Chapter Two transforms the book into a detective novel. Truppen finds himself ironically changing from incipient murderer into full-fledged detective then again into an agent of retribution. There are other books that use this convention, but this is not only one of the first to be written combining both subgenres it is also one of the best constructed and impressively inventive in plotting. The final chapters are fraught with tension and suspense and the ending is an unexpected shocker.

Hare makes use of excellent examples of detective novel conventions like the decoding of a strange message in a New Year's Day card sent to Truppen from someone signing himself Trench, and the examination of a substitute formula found in Updike's waistcoat that appears to have been composed on Truppen's typewriter. The more Truppen uncovers the more it seems that someone had been watching his every move, knowing exactly what he had planned, and finding ways to make it appear that no one other than Truppen could have anything to do with the death. Yet we know he did not kill Updike! It's a marvel of psychological torture. We see Truppen slowly falling apart only to finally see the truth and turn Nemesis himself.

The recurring motif of Fate and Nemesis is one of the novel's literary strengths.  Voss describes his symphony to Truppen as a work that embodies the idea of struggle directed towards "the joy of approaching triumph" only to be crushed with a "punishment that awaits the man who dares to lift his head as high as that of the gods." The reader knows that this is both foreshadowing and a compact message of the novel's intent.

QUOTES: Voss: "You note that the Scherzo is the shortest movement."
Dr. Truppen nodded.
"Is not triumph always short-lived, Amos?"

...[H]ow had he ever discovered Truppen's plan? No secret had been guarded more closely. It had been shared with no one. It had been closeted in his mind, in the depths of it, in the very innermost part where, one might say, this curious, rhythmical repetition of questions was hammering away. Going on and on...

It was so like a spider enticing a fly into its web, and he wondered whether a spider could be so attracted to its victim as he was to Rascha; whether he could see beauty actually in the thing he wished to destroy. His feelings were torn by two opposing desires which struggled against each other within him: the one to take Rascha in his arms and embrace her, the other to set his fingers about he throat and kill her.

It gave [Truppen] enormous satisfaction to know that he could deceive her. It was a weapon which he might have occasion to use later on.

THE AUTHOR: Robert Hare Hutchinson wrote three detective novels and a handful of articles for magazines. His first book, interestingly, was a nonfiction work that may indicate what his first profession might have been: The Socialism of New Zealand (1916). The research for that book was done in collaboration with his wife while both were on their honeymoon. Fun couple! Hutchinson married into a wealthy Philadelphia family with an rich literary heritage. His wife Delia Farley Dana, on her father's side, was the granddaughter of Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of the sailor's memoir Two Years Before the Mast and an attorney well noted for his work defending slaves brought to trial under the Fugitive Slave Act. Delia's maternal grandfather was the noted "Poet Laureate of the Atlantic magazine" Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, once a mainstay of elementary and high school literature classes in the USA. A search of newspaper articles featuring Hutchinson and his wife turned up the notice in the Philadelphia Enquirer of their unusual marriage ceremony in 1913 which made the front page. They were married in an "ethical eugenic" wedding ceremony, a practice that the Dana family made somewhat popular at the time. The entire text of the marriage, wholly absent of any religious verbiage or theological content, was included in the article and included this bizarre statement Delia uttered to her husband to be: "I, Delia Farley Dana, take you, Robert Hare Hutchinson, to be my lawful husband, and I hope so to live that you may be enabled to attain your highest efficiency." The Hutchinsons lived for a time in Philadelphia but eventually emigrated to England and lived in London, no doubt in order to live under the type of socialist government they had studied and preferred. This also explains why although Hutchinson was an American his detective novels appeared first in UK editions.

EASY TO FIND? Well, this is quite a surprise to me. Four days ago when I checked there were three copies of the US first edition available for sale and one other reprint. Today there is only one copy (the reprint) offered. I feel a bit like Dr. Truppen: Who knew I was going to review this so favorably and went looking in advance to buy one of the few copies out there?  And not just one person -- three people! [insert Twilight Zone theme]

I'm not sure anyone would want the reprint I mentioned. That lone copy is being sold by Gyan Books Pvt. Ltd based in Delhi, India, another internet pirate who manufactures POD copies. Gyan Books is different from most of these thieves however, because they make their pirated copies seem like a collector's item. They bind their editions in "leather" boards and include a ribbon book marker. Here's how they describe the process: "This book is printed in black & white, sewing binding for longer life, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents." It's only $33 (cheap for a leather bound book, I think) and they offer free shipping. Someone ought to buy one of these (I'll never patronize an internet pirate "publisher"; they're really only printers) and let me know if it's worth the money or if it's, as I suspect, shoddily produced.

Robert Hare's Crime & Detective Novels
The Crime in the Crystal (1932)
  -- UK title: Spectral Evidence
The Doctor's First Murder (1933)
The Hand of the Chimpanzee (1934)