Through Three Rooms (1907) by Sven Elvestad (a.k.a. Stein Riverton)

Sven Elvestad, "sybarite extraordinaire," was a Norwegian journalist, essayist and an industrious mystery writer who penned over a hundred detective novels, novellas, short stories and newspaper serials – published in Norway and Sweden under the penname "Stein Riverton." Elvestad can be regarded as Norway's answer to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his series-detective, Asbjørn Krag, falling squarely into the "Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" category.

Back in 2018, I reviewed a then newly released translation of Elvestad's most well-known, justly celebrated mystery novel, Jernvogner (The Iron Chariot, 1909), but without further translations lost track of him. Fortunately, this has changed in the past few years. Not only for Elvestad!

Kabaty Press is a self-described micro-press of translated fiction and non-fiction with a small, but growing, catalog of early Scandinavian crime-and detective novels and short stories. Earlier this year, Kabaty Press published an English translation of Elvestad's Gjennem de tre værelser (Through Three Rooms, 1907). Through Three Rooms is novella, originally serialized in a Norwegian newspaper and published as a book under the title Dødens finger (The Finger of Death) in 1915. This edition is translated by Lucy Moffatt and comes with a lengthy, informative introduction from one of Norway's leading crime fiction experts, Nils Nordberg – who also gave his voice to the Norwegian audiobooks of Elvestad's work. Nordberg's introduction is very much worth a read as it paints a fascinating picture of the author and some interesting bits of genre history. Most notably, it unearthed that "an obscure British monthly magazine, Tip Top Stories of Adventure and Mystery, printed a slightly shortened translation of The Iron Chariot in its April 1924 issue." Several years before a rather a well-known detective novel was published. So there's a remote possibility The Iron Chariot stealthily influenced the British Golden Age detective story. However, it's more likely Anthony Berkeley can be credited with introducing the idea to the English-language detective story. And made really famous by someone else. So with all of that out of the way, let's get to the story at hand.

Through Three Rooms begins with Asbjørn Krag, comfortably seated in an armchair, receiving and listening to the plight of an old school friend, Dr. Karl Rasch, who has a practice in Smaalenene County. One of his patients is a rich Swedish-American, John Aakerholm, who arrived in the district five years ago and bought the famous Kvamberg Manor ("...the largest and best-known estates in the country"). While an eccentric old man, Aakerholm lived lavishly, threw house parties and acquired a large circle of friends. Even getting engaged to the Widow Hjelm. A popular figure newcomer in the community who entertained with marvelous stories of his adventurous "on the prairies and in the gold-mining districts." But a change came over old Aakerholm. And the parties came to a stop. Ever since he has been nervous wreck teetering on the edge. Rasch was called upon as a doctor at all hours, day and night, who found his patient on more than occasion completely out of his wits. That's not all.

John Aakerholm sleeps alone at night and has forbidden anyone to come even near his bedroom during the nighttime, which he ensured with elaborate precaution. To reach his bedroom, "one must pass through two rooms and three doors" and "once the clock has struck twelve and the old man has gone to bed, no one may enter any of the rooms" – which he locks with the only key. Rasch knows Aakerholm has to be frightened of someone, or something, as he has heard whisper, "is he a devil or a man?" And saw him hurl a heavy fruit bowl through an antique mirror. So what's eating away at his patient? Asbjørn Krag is delighted to help his old school friend, but, when they arrive at the manor house, a new development has taken place. Somebody tried to shoot Aakerholm and disappeared from a pavilion. This is the point where Krag remarks to Rasch that the case "no longer has any connection to the three rooms" and they have "emerged from one mystery only to find ourselves embroiled in another." Before too long, a body is found on the snowy grounds surrounding Kvamberg Manor.

So how well does this little novella from 1909 stand after more than a century? First of all, Through Three Rooms is not, really, a locked room mystery as you might expect from its premise. The three rooms and double-locked doors do pose a puzzle, but not one of the seemingly impossible variety. Secondly, the disappearance from the pavilion can be regarded as an impossible crime, "there were no tracks in the snow leading away from the pavilion," but hardly worthy of the "locked room mysteries" toe-tag. Through Three Rooms is an old-fashioned, Doylean-style suspense yarn about the mysterious, inexplicable character change of the lord of the manor that were not yet pass their expiration date in 1909. So there are barely any clues or very many suspects, but instead it's about what happened and how to solve it. Asbjørn Krag is not a detective who detects and deduces, but an all-knowing strategist who's always several steps ahead and maneuvers everyone towards the solution. Something more along the lines of a chess game than a detective story. Krag effortlessly checkmates the villains. A typical pulp hero of the period. However, the all-important answer to Aakerholm's personality change and why locked himself away behind two doors is not bad at all. Something simple and straight forward, but with a glimmer of the coming Golden Age. A shame most of Elvestad's detective stories were "breezily composed at restaurant tables and in hotel rooms," because more could have been done with the idea.

Through Three Rooms is not a Golden Age detective story hailing from a country with a different language and genre-history of its own, which would make it unfair to compare it to its Anglo counterparts. So, taking that into consideration, Through Three Rooms is a quick, fun read that would not be out-of-place in The International Rivals of Sherlock Holmes and comes especially recommended to the fans of the Great Detective. If only just to see what the influence of their favorite detective has wrought in other parts of the world.

Harbinger of Death

"An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumors."
- Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1902)

Sven Elvestad was a Norwegian journalist and author best known in his own country for his detective stories, published as by "Stein Riverton," who lended his (pen) name to an annual award for the best piece of Norwegian crime fiction – called the Rivertonprisen (Riverton Prize). A versatile prize that can be awarded to a novel, short story, stage play or screen play.

As a novelist, Elvestad appears to have been prolific with over a hundred titles in his bibliography, but one his earliest endeavors, Jernvognen (The Iron Chariot, 1909), proved to be the capstone of his literary career. The book came in second in "a poll of the greatest Norwegian crime novels of all time" and was translated into a dozen different languages, which makes it one of the greatest international successes Norway has had in the genre. So it was about time that this Norwegian classic got a long overdue publication in English.

The Iron Chariot received its long-awaited English translation at the hands of Lucy Moffatt and published by the Abandoned Bookshop in early 2017.

I think it's great that a relatively small, independent e-publisher took a chance on a translation of 1909 detective novel from Norway and have to admit, shamefully, that the book would have very likely passed me by had it not been for "JJ" of The Invisible Event – who posted an announcement and a review on his blog. So very grateful that he pointed my attention in the direction of the Abandoned Bookshop, because I noticed that they've reissued a number of detective novels by Clifton Robbins. A very obscure, Golden Age-period mystery writer and Dusty Death (1931), The Man Without a Face (1932) and Methylated Murder (1935) sound like they could be good reads, but they're detective stories to be investigated in a future blog-post.

The Iron Chariot takes place on an immense, rugged island, "an exceedingly popular destination for summer guests," where the nameless narrator of the story arrives at the dawn of summer. He arrives early in the holiday season and there only half a dozen guests present at the boarding house, but the sultry peace is shattered when the body of a man is found at the edge of the forest. The body belongs to Forestry Inspector Blinde and someone "smashed the casing of his brain like china."

In the first chapter, the narrator recalls two peculiar events that occurred on the night preceding the discovery of the body. One of these events happened when he decided two pay a visit to two friends, a brother and sister named Carsten and Hilde Gjærnæs, who live at Gjærnæs Farm, but, when he arrived there, the farm steward showed him the door – telling him that "the squire cannot be disturbed right now." However, the steward looked deadly pale. Obviously, they were trying to hide something. The second event occurs when, on his way back, he meets an elderly fisherman, Jan Jansen, who's a firm believer in the titular legend of the region. 

 

An "old legend" tells a peculiar story of man who used to own the farm a hundred years ago, "a reserved, eccentric type," with a passion half-crazed inventions. He had squandered his inheritance on this hobby. The last of these inventions was a horse-drawn, iron carriage and he drove it to his untimely dead one night. According to the locals, you always heard "the iron chariot rattling its way across the plain" whenever someone was about to die. The narrator and the fisherman had both heard the rattling sound of metal links on the night of the murder.

Evidently, this is not your common, garden-variety murder and requires the expertise of a specialist. So they called in a famous detective from Kristiania (present-day Oslo).

But when Asbøjrn Krag arrives, he behaved entirely like "a holidaying gentleman." Krag spends all his time taking walks, reading, eating and bathing. He's even there when a second body is found in exactly the same place as the previous one, but the Great Detective remained passive. However, the experienced armchair detective will quickly catch on that Krag is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the rather obvious murderer. Regardless, Riverton has to be commended for having the foresight, 1909, to foreshadow the murderer's guilt. Not exactly fine-tuned clueing, but ghosts of hints were dropped here and there. The plot is also very ambitious for the time.

Jernvognen (The Iron Chariot, 1909)

Krag explains that the central problem of the case is the murder of the Forestry Inspector, but through "accidental associations" other events got entangled in it. One of these events is what happened at the farm on the night of the murder and how this related to a death four years ago, which is also when the rattling was heard by the fisherman. The second plot-thread is the truth behind the ghostly chariot, but the answer to this problem will hardly excite modern readers. However, the borderline impossibility of ghostly chariot that leaves no tracks behind was a nice touch. All of these plot-threads are tangibly related to the first murder and gives the plot its complexity.

However, the most important aspect of the plot is the role of murderer in the story, because The Iron Chariot now stands as the earliest known example of a very particular trick and Riverton probably originated it. So this makes of it historical interest to people interested in how the detective developed.

As a detective novel, The Iron Chariot reads like a sultry premonition of the coming Golden Age, even if it will hardly pose a challenge to the modern reader, but the story has more to offer than an early example of the Golden Age mystery novel – namely an excellent translation of Riverton's period prose. Riverton essentially wrote a humid, stuffily atmospheric equivalent of Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902). Riverton simply replaced the dark, misty moors for a sunny, rugged island in the south of Oslo, but The Iron Chariot is (almost) as atmospheric as Doyle's famous yarn.

So readers who love the atmospheric detective novels by John Dickson Carr, Hake Talbot and Clifford Orr will probably be able to appreciate this story.

Riverton's writing also reminded me of the work of one of contemporaries, "Ivans," who was a Dutch mystery writer. Granted, I read only one of his books, De bosgeest (The Forest Spirit, 1926), but the plot of that one book also revolved around a forest ranger who was beaten to death in the woods. You have to wonder how many mystery writers in other European countries, like Britain or the Netherlands, were aware of their Norwegian partner in crime. Although he died in 1934 and that might have thrown him into obscurity outside of Norway.

In any case, The Iron Chariot was a fascinating, well written excursion into the genre's past and one that, until recently, had been without our reach behind that pesky language barrier. I really appreciate the people who made this historical important detective available and would like to end this review by channeling the spirit of the late President Ronald Reagan by telling the Abandoned Bookshop to tear down that barrier. There's more where this one came from!