Review of The Vanishing of Tera

28 Aug 2019 - Courtney Floyd

Published in The Athenaeum (4 Aug. 1900)

There are not many possible varieties in the telling of a conventional murder-story. Mr Fergus Hume, in The Vanishing of Tera (White & Co.), is long in revealing the name of the murderer. The corpse is wrongly identified, and when its identity is established suspicion falls on the person for whom the corpse was mistaken. The sole interest in the narrative is that of guessing which thimble hides the pea, and this element of interest is common to a great many other stories of this class. Oddly enough, there are no detectives worth speaking of in ‘The Vanishing of Tera’; their work is either not done at all or else it is badly done by the local police. However, there is a gipsy who uses a knife with much freedom, and there are two natives of islands in the South Seas who complicate matters painfully. As a whole the story is lugunrios and mechanical; it is quite free from wit and humour, and will suffice for little more than the delectation of an hour. It will no doubt be cceptable holiday literature. … [review continues for The Crimson Cryptogram]