Writing about blind detectives - part two

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.