Tom Sawyer Detective by Mark Twain

(Book Reviews)

And so I come to the end of the Tom Sawyer series, after The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Tom Sawyer Abroad .  

(Actually, if you're a real completist, according to Wikipedia, there are three more unfinished Tom Sawyer stories that were never published during Mark Twain's life, but were all published posthumously (W)--but I'm going to stop here, and just stick to the finished books in the series.)

I don't have a lot to say about this book, so this will hopefully be a pretty short review.

Like Tom Sawyer Abroad, this book is one of the lesser known sequels to The Adventure of Tom Sawyer.
Like Tom Sawyer Abroad, this book was written to get Mark Twain out of financial difficulty.

As with Tom Sawyer Abroad, this book is decidedly NOT a great work of literature.  And yet, it's short, it's easy to read, and it's got a few good chuckles in it along the way.  And so, I give it a recommendation, because it falls under the heading of "Well, you might as well read it if you're at all curious, because it's so quick and easy to read."

Judged purely on it’s plotline, I’d have to say this story is pretty bad. It relies on several incredible coincidences and contrivances.

It is also one of those murder-mystery stories in which the reader can guess what happened long before the characters figure it out, which makes it very boring for the reader.

What saves this book, then, are two factors. First of all, it’s very short. (Only about 60 pages in my edition). And a lot of faults can be forgiven in a story if the author keeps it mercifully short.

Secondly, there’s just enough glimpses of the old Mark Twain humor to redeem this story. For example, there's a wonderful little scene where Tom Sawyer uses reverse psychology to convince his Aunt Polly to send him and Huck Finn on a trip down to Aunt Sally.
There's another scene where Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn try to make up excuses as to why they arrived home late, and just get keep getting caught in one lie after another, until their Aunt Sally just loses all patience with them and drops the subject.
And there's another scene where Tom Sawyer gets very upset when Huck Finn suggests a missing person might not have been murdered, and accuses Huck Finn of being selfish for suggesting such a thing.  (In Tom Sawyer's mind, a murder-mystery always means excitement, and for Huck Finn to suggest no murder has taken place is, to Tom, an act of unbelievable selfishness).

There's not quite as much humor in this book as there is in Mark Twain's better books.  (This obviously wasn't his A-game on display here.)  But there's enough little gems here to mostly redeem the story.

I've already written a lot about the character inconsistencies in my review of Tom Sawyer Abroad, so I won't go through all that again here.  I'll just note that the characters appear in slightly different forms in each story, and leave it at that.
In this story, Tom Sawyer is now somewhat of a Sherlock Holmes type character--a brilliant wunderkind who notices all sorts of little things that the ordinary townsfolk overlook, and is thus able to solve the mystery that baffles everyone else.

Other Notes
* As of this writing, the Wikipedia entry on this novel claims (W) it is a sequel to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and a prequel to Tom Sawyer Abroad.
This novel was actually published two years after Tom Sawyer Abroad, but someone at Wikipedia decided it was actually before the events of Tom Sawyer Abroad.
I'd be curious to know how they arrived at this.  It's possible, but it's not at all definite from reading the text.
Both Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective refer back to the events in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  (In Tom Sawyer Detective, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn go back to stay again with Aunt Polly and Uncle Silas in the town where the climatic events of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn took place.)
However, Tom Sawyer Detective completely ignores all the events that took place in Tom Sawyer Abroad.

* The plot of this little story is completely ridiculous.  Among other incredible coincidences, it revolves around identical twins showing up and disappearing at very convenient times.
Mark Twain starts off the book by acknowledging the story is far-fetched, but claiming: "Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not inventions, but facts—even to the public confession of the accused. I take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a couple of them are important ones."
Some research on the Internet reveals this claim may be half true.  Mark Twain apparently plagiarized the plot of the story from a Danish novel, and this Danish novel was apparently loosely based on some sort of reported incident in the 17th Century.
So for anyone keeping score, I guess that's one sin removed from Mark Twain for inventing a ridiculous plot, and one score added for being a plagiarist.

*  So, this is not the only Mark Twain murder mystery that involves identical twins--Pudd'nhead Wilson also had identical twins as part of its story.
This blogger here claims that Tom Sawyer Detective therefore works great as in introduction to Pudd'nhead Wilson.  (Presumably to see how the story gradually evolved in Twain's mind).  Maybe.  Except I believe Pudd'nhead Wilson was published first.

* Aside from character inconsistencies, I think there's at least one plot inconsistency in these books.  In both Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer Detective, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are constantly thinking of get-rich-quick schemes.  In Tom Sawyer Abroad the boys flirt with the idea of starting a business selling genuine Sahara sand back in the United States.  In Tom Sawyer Detective there's a pair of stolen diamonds that the boys are trying to get the reward money for.
In both books, Mark Twain seems to have forgotten he already made these boys rich.  At the end of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Tom and Huck discover a cave full of gold, and all the money is invested on their behalf by Judge Thatcher.
...of course, I guess you could smooth over this apparent inconsistency by just arguing that the boys are insatiably greedy.

* The publisher's introduction in my volume (written by Stuart Hutchinson) does a good job of articulating how indulgent Mark Twain became towards his young hero by this last book.  He explains it much better than I could, so I'm just going to steal his analysis.

So much, too, for the Tom Sawyer of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, who was already losing much of his authenticity in Tom Sawyer Abroad.  Like Twain himself he has always wanted to star on centre-stage, to the extent that Twain, in Chapter 19 of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and as an act of self-criticism, makes us aware of "all the vicious vanity that was in him".  Also he originally counters Tom's fanciful sense of himself as an outcast by giving us a real outcast in the haunting and menacing presence of Injun Joe.  While Tom is the indulged hero of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, he isn't given this role on a plate--unlike in Tom Sawer, Detective. "How did you manage that?" the judge asks in this later novel:

Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable, "Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your Honour; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a' done it." "Nothing of the kind!  Not two in a million could 'a' done it.  You are a very remarkable boy."

Link of the Day
Noam Chomsky: What is Special About Language?