In One Hundred in the Dark Owen Johnson makes one of the characters say that the peculiar fascination of the detective story lies more in the statement of the problem than in the solution. “The solution doesn’t count. It is usually banal; it should be prohibited. What interests us is, can we guess it?”
One Hundred in the Dark illustrates that type of detective story that presents a problem but gives no solution. Giving all the information that one could be expected to have, it presents a problem with several different solutions possible. At the end of the story the problem is left unsolved—the reader is “in the dark,” but, because his mind has been awakened, he is fascinated. The author has gone further than usual, for he gives the story as if told in a club at the conclusion of a conversation in which several persons have taken part. The story is followed by further conversation that suggests a second problem—what did the members of the club think of the person who told the story? The result is that the author has cleverly established a definite setting, has aroused interest in the type of story to be told, and has emphasized the problem by giving it a new interest in the light of the question: What part did the members of the club think Peters played in the story that he himself told?
Owen Johnson was born in New York in 1878. He turned his college life at Yale into literary account in his interesting novel, Stover at Yale. He is the author of numerous short stories and plays.
Bon mots. Bright sayings.
De Maupassant. Guy de Maupassant, 1850-1893. A celebrated French novelist and poet. In Fort comme la Mort (Strong as Death) he tells of the life of fashionable society.
The Faust theme. A reference to the great tragedy of Faust by the German poet, Goethe, 1749-1832. Faust personifies humanity with all its longings.
The Three Musketeers, etc. The Three Musketeers, by Alexander Dumas, père, 1803-1870; Trilby, by George du Maurier, 1834-1896, and Soldiers Three, by Rudyard Kipling, 1865-, all tell stories of the close comradeship of three men.
Vie de Bohème. Scènes de la vie de Bohème by Henri Murger. The opera La Bohème is based upon this book.
Bluebeard and The Moonstone. In the stories of Bluebeard, and The Moonstone, a famous mystery story by Wilkie Collins, 1824-1889, curiosity plays a leading part.
Watteaulike. A reference to the conventional pictures of shepherdesses by Jean Antoine Watteau, a celebrated French painter, 1684-1721.