Story summary
Samenvatting van Het Bow-mysterie
- 8 min. leestijd
- 8 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A lodger lies dead behind a bolted door in Bow, and no one could have got in or out.
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Het Bow-mysterie in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 2 h 55 min2 h 15 min fast, 3 h 25 min slow
- Lengte
- 41.100 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Gemiddeld longer sentences, everyday words
- Voor het eerst verschenen
- 1892by Israel Zangwill
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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Het Bow-mysterie in short
The Big Bow Mystery takes a simple, shocking problem and builds a whole society around it. A young idealist is found dead behind a locked and bolted door in a London fog. The coroner proves two things that cannot both be true.
What Het Bow-mysterie is about
Picture a freezing December morning in the east of London, with fog pressed against every window. A landlady named Mrs. Drabdump wakes late and knocks on her lodger's door. Nobody answers. When a retired detective breaks it down, the young man inside has his throat cut, and the door was locked and bolted from within. The doctor says the dead man could not have done it himself. The coroner says no one else could have.
That is the puzzle of The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill. He wrote it for a London evening paper, The Star, and readers sent in so many solutions that he thanked them with a joking letter. You get a baffling crime, sharp comedy and a dread that never quite leaves the page.
Voor wie is het?. Readers who love a locked-room puzzle with fair clues, and who enjoy sharp comic portraits, Victorian London streets and courtroom drama.
The story in 8 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A foggy morning and a door that will not open
The story opens on a freezing December morning in Bow. Fog lies over the whole city. Mrs. Drabdump, a gloomy widow who lets rooms in Glover Street, hears St. Dunstan’s bells chime a quarter to seven and realizes she has overslept. She has overslept by half an hour. Her lodger Arthur Constant asked to be woken early for a meeting of tram workers.
Constant is a young, rich university man who has chosen to live like a working man. Her other lodger, the labor leader Tom Mortlake, left before dawn. She knocks, she calls, and she slides a telegram under the door. Nothing stirs. She tries the handle and finds the door locked, and she runs across the street to the one man she trusts.
That man is George Grodman, a famous retired detective. He thinks the young man is only worn out. Still, he comes over, finds the door locked and bolted, and puts his shoulder to it. The wood splinters and the door crashes open. What he sees makes him cry out. The fog, the oversleeping and the shut door are set down plainly before any crime is shown.
Pay attention to the ordinary morning, because the mystery grows out of it.
- 2Begin gratis met lezen
The inquest finds a death nobody could have caused
The newspapers are quick to say suicide, but Scotland Yard is not.
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The coroner proves it was neither suicide nor murder
The coroner's summing up is one of the cleverest passages in the book.
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The city turns the puzzle into a national game
After the open verdict, the press flood the country with theories.
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A poet in debt and a detective with a hold on him
The scene moves to the Mile End Road, where the cobbler Peter Crowl keeps his shop.
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Two rival detectives sit down to Christmas dinner
Wimp invites Grodman to a Christmas dinner at his home.
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Wimp stages an arrest in front of Gladstone
On January 21, the whole East End crowds toward the Bow Break o' Day Club.
- 8Begin gratis met lezen
What the book says about seeing and believing
Beneath the jokes, the novel is about how people see.
Read all 8 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Mrs. Drabdump A gloomy widow who rents out rooms at 11 Glover Street and expects every day to end badly, until the morning she cannot wake her lodger.
- Arthur Constant A rich young university man who lives among the poor of Bow and gives his time and money to the labor cause.
- Tom Mortlake A former compositor turned famous labor leader and orator, who lodges in the same house and keeps troubles of his own hidden.
- George Grodman A retired detective and landlord who lives across the street and wants above all to see his clever rival Wimp fail.
- Edward Wimp A polished young Scotland Yard detective who builds ingenious theories and wants the glory of solving the Bow Mystery.
- Denzil Cantercot A long-haired poet who writes for hire, owes rent, loves the Beautiful, and sells scraps of information to anyone who will pay.
- Peter Crowl A cobbler and street-corner freethinker who calls himself a plain man and stands loyally by his friend Mortlake.
- Jessie Dymond A talented dressmaker engaged to Mortlake, whose disappearance in November becomes one of the book's deepest puzzles.
How it ends (spoiler)
Grodman is the murderer. He drugged Constant with a sleeping draught, then killed him in the instant after breaking down the door, while Mrs. Drabdump covered her eyes. When Jessie Dymond is found alive in Australia, Grodman confesses to the Home Secretary to save the condemned Mortlake and deny Wimp his glory. Mortlake is reprieved. Grodman then shoots himself in the heart in front of the Home Secretary and dies at once.
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Vragen over Het Bow-mysterie
What is The Big Bow Mystery about?
A young philanthropist is found dead with his throat cut in a locked and bolted bedroom in Bow, East London. With no weapon and no way in, an inquest, the press and two rival detectives try to explain it.
Who wrote The Big Bow Mystery and when?
Israel Zangwill wrote it for the London evening paper The Star as a serial. His preface bears the date September 1895 and says the book was written about four years earlier.
What is a locked-room mystery?
It is a crime story in which a death takes place in a sealed space, so the culprit seems unable to have entered or left. The puzzle is how it was done, and this book plays the form for humor and suspense.
Is The Big Bow Mystery a true story?
No, it is fiction. The setting is real, with Bow, the East End, Scotland Yard and even a mention of Mr. Gladstone, but the people and the crime are invented for the story.
Is The Big Bow Mystery easy to read?
Yes in the sense of being lively. It has short chapters, courtroom scenes, newspaper letters and plenty of jokes, and its clear plain mystery keeps you following each clue from the first foggy morning.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Zangwill, Israel. The Big Bow Mystery. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-big-bow-mystery.
Zangwill, I. (2026). The big Bow mystery. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-big-bow-mystery (Original work published 1892)
Zangwill, Israel. The Big Bow Mystery. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-big-bow-mystery.
@book{zangwill2026big,
author = {Zangwill, Israel},
title = {The Big Bow Mystery},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-big-bow-mystery},
note = {First published 1892}
}
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