| Title | : | Sins for Father Knox |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0393307875 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780393307870 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1973 |
Sins for Father Knox Reviews
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3 and a half stars.
10 short detective stories in the best Sherlock tradition with Miss Eve Adams a nightclub singer playing Holmes. The really fun parts of the book are the Ten Commandments of Father Knox and discovering which Commandments each story breaks. Father Knox (17 February 1888 - 24 August 1957) was an English theologian, priest and crime writer. He apparently had a decent career in the Church and made contributions to theological literature that were not insignificant. He was friendly with a lot of writers including G.K. Chesterton and perhaps from Chesterton developed a love of crime novels...
He not only read them but wrote them though his novels are not that famous. he did write two theoretical accomplishments that are truly Chesterton in spirit and for these he is mostly remembered.
Knox wrote a humorous essay in which he portrayed Sherlock Holmes as a historical personage which founded the entertaining body of pseudo-science known as Holmesiana, and in 1929 he issued ten commandments that crime writers should follow - at least those writing in the Holmes tradition.
Father Knox's Ten Commandments.
1.The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. No more than one secret room or passage is allowable. I would add that a secret passage should not be brought in at all unless the action takes place in the kind of house where such devices might be expected.
4.No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5.No Chinaman must figure in the story*
6.No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7.The Detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. the stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
* this was not a display on the part of the good Father, but simply his reaction to what was one of the most hackneyed ploys of cheap detective stories that he had read during his lifetime .
If you are not sure which commandment is being violated by which story, you can find out by turning to the "ab-solutions" at the end of the book.
I'm not going to tell you the stories that would be spoilers they are short enough as it is..I will say that not only are some of them difficult to solve "who done it", in some cases there are multiple options as to what commandment has been broken. All stories feature the pretty Czech nightclub singer Eve Adam, though the detectives vary as she travels around the world. There is even one story that maths geeks will adore.
I am only sad there were not more stories. In fact I would enjoy a whole novel about Eve's adventures.
bought for $1.50./Salvos -
During the "Golden Age" of British crime fiction, Ronald Knox, a British clergyman, literary critic, and author of several crime novels himself, wrote the "ten commandments" of crime fiction (see here:
http://goo.gl/v1saO). These rules vary from "Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable" to "No Chinaman must figure in the story." (In his introduction, Škvorecký explains that despite the regrettable epitaph, the rule "was not a display of racism on the part of the good Father, but simply his reaction to what was one of the most hackneyed ploys of cheap detective stories.")
Since the writing of these "commandments," most have been broken in very good examples of crime fiction. Josef Škvorecký, a Czech author who emigrated to Canada following the Prague Spring, set out to break all of Father Knox's rules in this collection of short, linked crime stories. You, the reader, are charged with two tasks when reading: determining not only whodunnit in each story, but also which sin Škvorecký has committed against the commandments. (If you need some help working out the "who," the "what," and the "how" of each story, the "Ab-solutions" in the back will clear things up for you.)
Each of the ten stories find the gorgeous, clever, and world-weary Czech night-club singer Eve Adam unexpectedly playing detective in run-down bars and seedy districts all over the world. Having been cleared of a murder she was wrongly convicted of in the first story (with the help of Škvorecký's usual leading man, Detective Boruvka) Eve joins a traveling Czech performance group. But whether she's in Sweden, Italy, San Francisco, a cruise across the Atlantic, or Prague, certain things don't change for Eve--for all her cynicism, she's a romantic who can never stay away from smooth-talking men, and wherever she goes, someone seems to unexpectedly turn up dead.
Škvorecký taps into his inner Conan Doyle, and stresses logic and deduction in each tale, but honestly, sometimes the stories are convoluted enough (much like a Sherlock Holmes story) that it would prove a difficult thing to work out the answers. But while the stories occasionally feel a bit too clever, the surrounding characterizations are really rich and entertaining. Characters reoccur throughout the book and anecdotes told in one story pop up again and are put to good use in another. (You really have to read all of the stories in order--they build on one another in small, but meaningful ways. Also, it's best to read each story in one sitting--it's easy to forget little pertinent details and clues otherwise.) Eve is a sharp narrator, and a very funny observer of human folly--including her own--which really makes this a pleasure to read. -
Joseph Skvorecky went through a long period in which he wrote bad detective stories that were equally bad literature. Sins for Father Knox is the one good book to emerge out of this regrettable phase in the career of a truly great writer.
In this collection of stories, Skvorecky analyzes the pertinence of following rules of the genre when writing but taking Father Knox's famous rules for detective writing and breaking them one a time to see if it is possible to write good detective fiction while disregarding the laws.
For those of you unfamiliar with the famous Decalogue it is as follows:
1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernaural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
Skvorecky duly writes ten stories in which one of the ten rules is broken in each. The reader is invited to identify which rule has been breached in each story. This exercise is in fact highly amusing and should satisfy any lover of crime fiction who has in fact stumbled over this book which is shelved in the literature section rather than the crime section of most book stores.
What Skvorecky really manages to do of course is to demonstrate that the rules of the genre must be respected if the writer is to produce a good mystery. The next step is to read Aristotle's poetics which lays down the rules for basic literature as would be found in the fiction department. -
Very neat. Velvetink's review says it all. Perhaps more of an academic exercise than anything else, but still interesting.
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Setting out to undermine our dear Father
Ronald Knox’s 10 commandments of detective fiction, Sins contains 10 stories which each break an unspecified Knox Rule, and ask you not just to solve your standard mysteries, but also which rule is broken in each story. Through clever misdirections this game is more complex than the first story in the collection might bely, but they’re not so complicated that you’ll feel out of your depth as a casual reader.
Sins for Father Knox is part of
Josef Škvorecký’s Lieutenant Boruvka series, but the novel actually abandons Boruvka in favour of Eve Adam, a wily nightclub dancer we meet as a wrongly accused criminal in the first entry of this short story collection. Where Boruvka is slow and thoughtful, Eve is a welcome departure from our standard detectives, filling these stories with so much flair that is incredibly mismatched from the methodical approach to breaking Knox’s rules Škvorecký displays. As each story points you towards breaking several of the rules, you’re challenged by a small pause box in each to figure which of them it really was. As I said these aren’t too complicated for any reader - but the joy of seeing Škvorecký bust up Father Knox will really be that much better if you have gotten to know Father Knox by tearing into his stories and others using his rules. And, of course, there is the issue of the Mathematicians of Grizzly Drive.
I suppose, with a title like that it shouldn’t be any surprise that Grizzly Drive has an outrageously convoluted solution, but it is one of the few moments in the collection that the puzzle was actively detracting from the narrative. There are certainly other moments where the puzzles don’t add anything, but Grizzly manages to be the only one where things get worse. Upon a second reading, this story is definitely a lot more manageable but when the story sets out to ask you to solve an equation it really is a bit much. For all the fun Eve Adam lends as our detective and perspective, getting her to draw lines for an entirely arbitrary clue that the story insists is vital completely killed any momentum Grizzly Drive had.
In contrast, some of the weird games that Škvorecký plays to justify some downright silly breaks in Knox’s rules are without a doubt the most clever approaches to the detective fiction puzzle I’ve ever seen, and brilliantly highlight the benefits of short puzzle stories, as their value would definitely dwindle if dragged out to a full novel.
Speaking of a full novel - do not be fooled into thinking this collection is the wildly disconnected mess of unrelated words we saw in other short stories this year - every entry into the journey of Eve Adam ties into the last and the way everything comes full circle at the end is incredibly satisfying. Character arcs that would make no sense to follow in other detective stories are elegantly resolved, further demonstrating just how talented Škvorecký is at one thing in particular - achieving what he set out to do.
Begrudgingly coming in at 5th place is Flex's favourite book for the year. Why, you ask, is your favourite book in 5th place and not first? We’re ranking these stories based on what we’d recommend the most, and as much as I love Sins for Father Knox, its unnecessarily complicated deconstructions of trivial genre guidelines give it a high bar for entry by premise, and thus, we wallow in 5th, but a glorious 5th it is.
This book shines most as a veteran murder mystery reader - but I truly hope that after you’ve sunk your teeth into the genre a bit more you get the chance to read this one. It was a tad difficult to track down a copy at first, but they are out there and are comfortably worth it. I carried this book with me for longer than any other we covered this year as I pieced together what misdirections Škvorecký set out to play, months after we’d finished it and already seen the official solutions.
Check out our full thoughts over on Death of the Reader! -
The striking cover of this English translation from the late 80s drew me in as soon as I saw it at Barbed Wire Books in Longmont, and the game of the book convinced me. The structure is 10 detective short stories, each one of which breaks one of the 10 detective story “commandments” created by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox, a priest, reader and writer of detective stories in the early 20th century. The introduction tells us he hobnobbed with all the usual suspects real and fictional: He knew Chesterton, who wrote the Father Brown mysteries, and founded “Holmesiana” accidentally by writing an essay as if Holmes was a historical person.
But these stories actually have little to do with Father Knox, besides the ten commandments that serve as rules to the game. At a certain point in each story, a small box notifies the reader that there has been enough information to deduce not only who the murderer was, but which commandment was broken in the story, and “ab-solutions” are found at the end of the book.
Each story is in some way about the nightclub singer and accidental detective, Eve Adam. I was really impressed with the versatility of approaches, which made each story fresh. The last story was a bit of a stretch to be considered breaking its assigned commandment, but I think that was the only way to make it a surprise, since readers who followed the rest of the book know which commandment is left.
I've been missing out on mysteries, and Europe in the 70s, apparently, so I'll be looking for books with more of each in the future. -
Po knize jsem sáhla jako po oddechovce a jako taková celkem splňuje očekávání, pokud se teda člověk nesnaží usledovat všechny postavy příběhu, to mi při čtení po kouskách moc nešlo. (A to jsem, sakra, před časem v klidu četla Malaz. Ale měla jsem na to větší klid.)
Detektivní složka občas prolétla úplně mimo mě (až mi připadalo, že nabídnuté vysvětlení bylo prostě jedno z mnoha možných - ale je možné, že mi něco uteklo), jindy byly naopak důležité detaily celkem zřejmé.
Příjemné překvapení bylo brebentění hlavní hrdinky, které mě většinu doby bavilo, i když ke konci ho bylo možná už trochu moc.
Televizní seriál jsem kdysi viděla, moc si z něj nepamatuju, ale je možné, že přispěl k mému celkovému dojmu. A jedna konkrétní podrobnost, která mi utkvěla v hlavě, v knize ani nebyla, tu si zřejmě vymysleli až do seriálu. :) -
Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe bývají někdy řazeny jako druhá kniha ze série o poručíku Borůvkovi, přestože ten v knize není hlavní postavou. Děj chronologicky patří za Smutek poručíka Borůvky, takže i já jsem se držel tohoto pořadí. I tentokrát jde o poměrně krátké povídky, což je zde možná trochu na škodu, alespoň mě se subjektivně četlo o něco hůře, než Smutek. Nejspíš to bude tím, že se každá povídka odehrává v jiném prostředí, do případů je zapleteno hodně postav a samy o sobě jsou hodně zamotané. Než se relativně krátkém prostoru pořádně zorientuji, už je konec případu a další je zase někde úplně jinde. A přiznám se bez mučení, že na dedukce o tom, které z pravidel že zrovna bylo porušeno, jsem rovnou rezignoval, přestože jsem svého času viděl i televizní zpracování.
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I loved the gimmick and the stories are full of 70s Eastern European charm, but the Sins for Father Knox is too damn bloated. With more focus this could have been a gem. Good mysteries, humor, characters, that aforementioned charm... but the bloat sucked the fun out of some of the stories.
(And the last story felt like a cheat, commandment-wise.) -
Ako interaktívna hra v knihe je to dobrý nápad, bohužiaľ, okrem toho nápadu som v tom veľa nenašiel.
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Klasika, která nezklame.
Svižné zábavné detektivní povídky, zápletkou většinou mnohem zajímavější, než stejnojmenný, knihou inspirovaný seriál z 90.let -
I read this more as a curiosity than anything, and as that, it was satisfying. The conceit of the book is that it consists of ten loosely joined short stories, each of which breaks one of Fr. Ronald Knox's
10 Commandments of Detective Fiction (you'll need to scroll or search to get to the list). I've seen this book referred to several times in essays on Knox or on mystery short stories, and when I realized it was in our university library, I had to check it out, both literally and figuratively.
These stories were written at the height of the Cold War by a Czech
who fled to Canada after the Soviets invaded Czechoslovakia. They do come off as a bit dated, but not annoyingly so.
Each story pauses just before the denouement and a box cues you to consider which commandment was broken in the story. The answers (should you need or wish them) are in the back, labeled "Ab-solutions" (yeah, I know). Some of the applications are a bit of a stretch, in my opinion, but it was a good effort.
Worth your time for a diversion, but your life will not be much the less for not having read it, either. -
Skvorecky apparently wrote these stories as a series of exercises to illustrate violations of rules for detective stories set out by the referenced Father Knox. Unfortunately, they also read like exercises, with terribly contrived scenarios, relevant facts being dropped randomly into the story, and resolutions that make little or no sense. Worse, the characters are rarely given enough thoughts or motivations or expressions to care about them, except for the protagonist, Eve Adam, and her encounters with Skvorecky's Lt. Boruvka in the first and last stories of the book. This is a step down from Skvorecky's first book of detective stories, which was no great shakes to begin with, and lacks his distinctive humor and sadness arising from human crimes and errors.
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Interesting... I thought this was going to be a set of stories about Lieutenant Boruvka, but it wasn't. Although the Lieutenant makes a brief appearance, these concern the (mis)adventures of nightclub singer and occasional sleuth Eve Adam, and are set variously in Czechoslovakia, Sweden and America.
Some of the stories are pretty ponderous, some of them are a pleasure. It's all quite gentle and whimsical in a pre-1968 kind of way.
3.5 stars, rather than 3... -
For my full review click on the links below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress... -
The second book in Josef Skvorecky's Lieutenant Boruvka series. . .
