The Man In The Dark
A review of The Man in the Dark by John Ferguson – 230904
The only other novel by John Ferguson I had read was Death and Mr Dodsley, a later book than The Man in the Dark, the first in his Francis McNab series and originally published in 1928. McNab is a private investigator hired by a newspaper, The Record, in an attempt to increase circulation by beating the police to solving a crime that would pique its readers interests. He has his work cut out in solving what happened to a prominent public figure, Ponsonby Paget, who as well as being a politician publishes a scandal sheet, the Eye Opener.
The central conceit of the story opens up some fascinating opportunities for Ferguson. The eponymous man in the dark is Sandy Kinloch, a man who was blinded during the First World War and is now very much down on his luck. After an argument with his friend Dunn, he wanders around the streets of Ealing in a peasouper, with only his stick to guide his way. He is approached by Paget and lured by a welcome £5 note accepts the man’s strange request to return with him to his house and sit in an anteroom rustling papers while Paget meets a guest about whose visit he is apprehensive.
Paget’s concerns are well-founded as his unknown guest murders him and on discovering Kinloch’s presence knocks him out and abducts him. Kinloch’s stick is left behind in the turmoil. The irony, of course, is that as Kinloch is blind, he could not have seen what had gone on nor identify who the murderer was. However, the culprits and the police assume that Kinloch was sighted and that he has information that would be crucial to the case.
A blind person’s other senses are heightened and through his acute sense of hearing Kinloch is able to pick up some vital clues as to who his captors are, there seems to be a woman involved, and where he has been taken and held. This information will prove invaluable. To complicate matters, in an early example of Stockholm syndrome, Kinloch begins to develop feelings for his female captor.
The twist in the story is that Kinloch’s condition is not permanent and through the good offices of Dunn has an operation which restores his sight. McNab, the only person to realise that Kinloch was blind, after a careful and Holmesian inspection of his stick, is on the track of a blind man when, now, the man who can help him piece together what happened is sighted.
The plot is complex, there are many more nuances and twists than this bald synopsis suggests, and the tone of the book is more of a thriller than a straightforward detective story. Much of the information relating to Paget’s murder is provided in the early chapters and there are enough clues in the text for the reader to detect that the underlying reason for the crime is a desperate attempt to forestall damaging details being printed in The Eye Opener. As to the identity of the culprit, that is a different matter, but that is almost irrelevant as the pace of the book hots up to its dramatic conclusion.
McNab is a solid sleuth, a cut above the police who are all at sea on this case, and with a degree of luck mixed with finely attuned deductive powers, is able to crack the mystery. Chance, a journalist on The Record, plays the part of his Watson and, as is the way with the coincidence strewn genre, was the man that Paget was expecting to sit in the anteroom until he was unavoidably detained. Stylistically, Ferguson has chosen to tell the story through three perspectives, an approach that gives greater depth to the telling of the mystery and works well. His ability to create atmosphere and his overall writing style and choice of vocabulary which is not as clunky as many of those writing in the 1920s, makes this a satisfying read.
I expect to read more of McNab’s exploits.
