Story : Stir outside the Cafe Royal

Story : Stir outside the Cafe Royal 
From : 

Book – Shadows of Sherlock Holmes

Author: Clarence Rook 

Score: 3/10
Year: 1998

Publisher: Wordsworth 

ISBN 9781853267444

Pages 5* 

Language: English


Spoiler alert ! 

I'll copy paste the small review I included in the rest of the book and then expand a bit : 

" Rook's stir outside the Cafe Royal is the 11th and shortest story [in Shadows of Sherlock Holmes] collection; it features a first woman who helps to unravel a series of crimes, but isn't to be commended as a feminist piece ; indeed, it describes her in a sexist way, and gives her a stereotypical scene of 'hysterics' ; the story itself has moments of fineness in wording, but seems, sadly, far too short to be appreciated as a case of investigative fiction..."


Indeed, I felt that including such a short story, where we don't get a case, developing into an investigation, was far too short. We only get the end tail of it, solved by a woman, who then proceeds to quit and breaks down into hysterics. This irked me to no end. 

Why? simply because every single other story has a full-fledged story, involving MEN, whose intelligence and prowess in investigative technique are always put forward ; where none of them retire or quit, simply because of their success ; when none of them has an emotional break down. 

I'll grant that in view of the period, 1898, women's hysterics were very much part of the cultural expectation ; but, in a book from 1998, a whole century later, to choose this of all but partial story, disturbs me. Why choose a story where a woman's mental capacity at solving a crime isn't put forward as much as any other man in the rest of these stories included in the same collection ? 

I assume that Mr Rook didn't know how to write a woman's thinking process and how she could solve a crime, so he simply omitted its entirety, and because Sigmund Freud had just published, in 1896, his theories about women and hysteria, society fell into a new trope of giving women this role in fiction, and Rook fell into this very trap. 

Even granting the cultural norms, this story wasn't pleasant to read, and I don't plan of coming back to it. 

The story did show some promise and its style was interesting ; the fashion in which the story ended was interesting and has merits - and it would have been great to see a full fledged version of this somewhere, to showcase the brilliance that lead to this solution. The wording and eloquence were there ; its just the substance that lacked in a longer form to actuate its potentials.