The Big Bow Mystery: A Magic Lamp Classic Mystery

The Big Bow Msytery is reported to be the first 'locked-room' mystery novel - a detective story that follows the rules of 'fair play' by providing the evidence for the solution, with clues imbedded in the text. It also supplies alternative solutions and suspects, and a classic 'red herring' approach, with a 'least-likely' suspect as the villain. The plot involves the murder of a well-known 'Union Agitator, ' his throat having been cut in his East End flat on London's Bow Street. His door was locked and bolted from the inside, and the windows were inaccessible. No weapon was found in the room, hence it appeared to not be a suicide. An obvious suspect has a good alibi when the murder was committed. The details are revealed in an amusing coroner's inquest comes up with a strange open verdict: "It seems clear that the deceased did not commit suicide. It seems equally clear that the deceased was not murdered."

Born to eastern European emigrants, Israel Zangwill dedicated his life to championing the cause of the oppressed. Jewish emancipation, women’s suffrage, assimilation-ism (the idea that Jews should cease to be Jews and melt into the populations of countries in which they lived, ) territorialism and Zionism (understood as a national liberation movement) were all fertile fields for his pen. His brother was also a writer, the novelist Louis Zangwill, and his son was the prominent British psychologist, Oliver Zangwill. Zangwill received his early schooling in Plymouth and Bristol. When nine years old he was enrolled in the Jews’ Free School in Spitalfields in east London, a school for Jewish immigrant children. The school offered a strict course of both secular and religious studies while supplying clothing, food, and health care for the scholars, and today one of its four houses is named Zangwill in his honour. At this school young Israel excelled and even taught part-time, finally becoming a full-fledged teacher. While teaching, he studied for his degree in 1884 from the University of London, earning a BA with triple honors. In later life, his friends included well known Victorian writers such as Jerome K. Jerome and H. G. Wells. Zangwill died in 1926 in Midhurst, West Sussex after trying to create the Jewish state in such diverse places as Canada, Australia, Mesopotamia, Uganda and Cyrenaica