
I’ll be honest, I’ve been kind of dreading this. A glance across the spines of the Dr. John Thorndyke novels and short story collections by R. Austin Freeman reveals Helen Vardon’s Confession (1922) to be his longest book by a factor of about 50%, yet Nick Fuller — who directed me so some excellent Thorndyke novels when I was new to author and character both — considers it perhaps Freeman’s worst offering. And having now read it, I can see its many problems, not least of which is a short story’s worth of criminous endeavour hiding in a 130,000 word novel that takes in too many loose ideas to warrant its tedious length. This was…not fun to read.