Heck, Peter J. _ A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court_, A Mark Twain
Mystery.  New York: Berkley Prime Crime, 1996.  Pp. 311.  Paper.  $5.99
US, $7.99 CAN.  ISBN 0-425-16034-3.

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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

        Janice McIntire-Strasburg
        University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Copyright (c) 1998 Mark Twain Forum.  This review may not be published or
redistrubuted in any medium without permission.

_A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court_, one of a series of Mark Twain
Mysteries, makes for a pleasant break from more scholarly academic works,
but at the same time contains enough biographical and thematic references
to Twain and his work to enhance a good mystery story for avid Twainians.
Although Heck has taken considerable license with Twains whereabouts in
the mid-1890s (a fact which he adequately acknowledges and explains in his
Historical Notes and Acknowledgments), the leap is neither so wide nor so
high that it detracts from his purpose of positing Twain as a deductive
logician and solver of unsolved crime.  As in other titles from the
series, Twains fictional secretary, William Wentworth Cabot plays Watson
to Twains Holmes, and together they solve a murder through the use of
deductive logic with a little help from voodoo.  Other historical literary
and artistic characters abound, including George Washington Cable as
Twains guide during his New Orleans visit and the instigator of Twains
interest in the murder; Buddy Bolden, an early New Orleans representative
of the Jazz era; Eulalie Echo, one of many famous hoo-doo women and
godmother of Jelly Roll Morton; and Tom Anderson,  an influential though
unofficial political figure in the area of New Orleans later to become
Storyville.

In his Historical Notes, Heck states that Mark Twain, to my knowledge,
never solved a murder mystery.  However, Twains body of work contains many
instances in which logical reasoning plays a part and demonstrates him to
be a master of this style of argumentation.  The most obvious of these
would be _Puddnhead Wilson_ (first American edition 1894).  David Wilson
uses a combination of deductive logic and the introduction of the
relatively new concept of fingerprinting to solve the Judges murder by Tom
Driscoll.  But even as early as _Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ (1885),
and later in _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court_ (1889), the book
from which Heck derives his title, Twain presents his characters using
deductive logic in their dealings.  In particular, _Tom Sawyer Abroad_
(1893-4), demonstrates Twains interest in and facility with the logical
syllogism.  Tom, Huck, and Jim expend a major portion of their dialogue
creating and then attempting to refute fallacious logical arguments.

The most interesting part of Hecks novel, however, is his depiction of
Wentworth Cabot as a Yale-educated but naive Yankee who is transported to
New Orleans in his capacity of personal secretary to Twain.  While Twain
actually solves the murder, Cabot emerges as an erstwhile Innocent Abroad
whose commentary on Southern culture manifests itself as a re-creation of
Twains more famous Innocent.  The first lines of the novel solidify his
point of view and predicate him as a veritable innocent, destined to
misunderstand the culture by which he is presently surrounded:

My instructors at Yale always spoke confidently of preparing their
students for life.  I believe that, in general, they did their job well.
Upon my graduation, I felt that I had learned many things, both practical
and theoretical, and had gone out to confront the world confident of my
abilities and my training.  But as I soon realized, nothing could have
prepared me for the position of traveling secretary to Mr. Samuel L.
Clemens...

Cabots education begins with his introduction to Creole cuisine.  Faced
with an oral menu of unfamiliar items, he accedes to Cables suggestion of
gumbo as luncheon fare.  His insular point of view compares it to chowder,
a familiar item from his New England experience, although he states that
[o]f course, the recipe would probably not be as good as the real thing
from good old New England, but I was willing to take my chances.

Cabots Southern education climaxes when one of the major suspects in the
murder case challenges him to a duel.  Though he is ignorant of proper
dueling etiquette and Southern tradition, Cabots Yankee sentiment
parallels the  notion of masculine honor, which culminates in neither man
backing down.  Cabot fires into the air and is saved from death or injury
by his antagonists fortuitous collapse.  He is arrested and arraigned,
saved from imprisonment only by Mark Twains fame and his formidable
talents at argument.  Cabots successive re-education into a more
cosmopolitan point of view mirrors Twains portrayal of himself in _The
Innocents Abroad_ and enhances the mystery format.

The Twain depicted in the novel retains many personality traits which will
be familiar to Twainians.  The story is interspersed with near-aphorisms
which _sound_ like Twain even if they are not.  His mock lecture, although
tailored to fit the plot of the novel, creates an authentic flavor of
Twains platform style.  His more notorious eating, drinking, and smoking
habits as portrayed in this novel mirror the public image of  the popular
culture Twain from the time period.  While the construction of the racial
issues surrounding the murder appears simplistic and perhaps stereotypical
given Twains own more intricate and often ambiguous portrayals in _Huck
Finn_ and _Puddnhead Wilson_, the format of the traditional ratiocination
novel does not demand a more complex treatment, and the treatment does not
detract from the novels purpose as intellectual entertainment.  For those
with a penchant for mystery and a historical interest in either Twain or
New Orleans, _A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court_ is a fast and
entertaining read.