Heck, Peter J.  _The Prince and the Prosecutor: A Mark Twain Mystery_.  New
York: Berkley Prime Crime, 1997.  Pp. viii + 324.  Cloth, 5-1/2" x 8-1/2".
$21.95.  ISBN 0-425-15970-1.

This book and many others are available at discounted prices from the
TwainWeb Bookstore, and purchases from this site generate commissions that
benefit the Mark Twain Project.  Please visit
<http://web.mit.edu/linguistics/www/forum/>.

Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:

Jim McWilliams <[log in to unmask]>
Troy State University

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  This review may not be published or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

In his latest Mark Twain Mystery, _The Prince and the Prosecutor_, Peter J.
Heck supposes that a murder occurs aboard the ship taking Mark Twain to
Europe to begin one of his lecture tours of the early 1890s.  Also aboard
are Twain's private secretary, Wentworth Cabot, and his friend, Rudyard
Kipling.  The mystery is a sticky one:  How can Twain solve the riddle of
Germanic passenger who claims to be the Prince of Ruckgarten (a locale that
Twain knows doesn't exist) who has been falsely accused of pushing a young
Philadelphia socialite overboard during a storm?  While the mystery proves
to be a tough one to crack, Mark Twain solves it through some creative
thinking and good luck.

_The Prince and the Prosecutor_ is the third in Heck's series of Mark Twain
Mysteries, following _Death on the Mississippi_ (which I reviewed for this
Forum in December of 1995) and _A Connecticut Yankee in Criminal Court_.
As in _Death on the Mississippi_, Heck's latest mystery proceeds at a
deliberate pace, delaying the murder until the midway point of the novel.
Personally, I prefer such a pace to the breakneck, body-a-minute tempo of
some mysteries since it allows ample time for character development and
description.

Indeed, Heck succeeds particularly well with the latter as he has done a
great deal of research into the period.  Early in his novel, for example,
he describes New York's harbor in such a way that it could be an account
from a newspaper of the period.  Furthermore, while I have no idea whether
or not Twain's ship, the _City of Baltimore_, really existed, it is so well
described that I can easily visualize its decks and staterooms.

Similarly, Heck gives vivid descriptions of the ship's crew--from its
captain to the "black gang" (the coal stokers).  In fact, nearly all of the
characters in the novel are lifelike, with only one exception, that of the
murdered Philadelphian, Robert Babson.  While I understand that this
character must be disliked by more than one person so that there will be a
handful of people suspected of his murder, I found him to be as flat as
cardboard.  If Heck had portrayed him with some subtlety (a bully who
outwardly seems to be kind, for instance), then his character would have
had some depth.  As it reads now, however, Heck has gone overboard to
ensure that everyone taking passage on the _City of Baltimore_ thoroughly
detests the young man.

More than making up for this uninspired characterization, however, is the
characterization of Wentworth Cabot, Twain's personal secretary, who
narrates the story.  Like Holmes's Dr. Watson, Cabot serves as a gofer and
a sounding board for Twain's various theories about the murder.  Also, like
Watson, he asks the questions of the detective that the reader would like
to ask and, of course, these questions usually demonstrate that the
sidekick and reader are a step behind the detective in solving the mystery.
But while his primary purpose may be to serve as lens through which the
reader sees Twain, Cabot is not without his own charms.  Even when he is
away from Twain--whether it is when he deals with a librarian who is eager
to get Twain to lecture for free or when he flirts with Babson's
sister--Cabot's scenes are entertaining.

The focal point of the novel, of course, is Mark Twain, and here Heck also
succeeds.  Heck is obviously a fan of Twain's life and works, for there is
enough biographical information to keep Twain fans like myself happy.  When
Twain complains to his secretary that copyright pirates are the "plague" of
his life, for example, all Twain fans know that he indeed spent much of his
time in these years fighting to protect his copyrights.  Elsewhere in his
novel, Heck has Twain use the punch line to old jokes ("Is he dead" when
the subject of European artists comes up) and pontificate on various
political and literary topics.  In his first Mark Twain Mystery, Heck tried
to imitate Twain's voice, a task at which he was doomed to fail (who, after
all, can imitate THAT voice?).  In the _Prince and the Prosecutor_,
however, Twain speaks in a more pedestrian tone, with only some occasional
colloquial expressions for spice.  I found this approach to the dialogue
more convincing since it allowed me to shift from focusing on Twain as a
historical figure to Twain as a character in a novel.  In other words,
instead of finding myself comparing the voice of Heck's creation with the
authentic voice, I could concentrate on the plot.

All in all, then, Heck's novel is an appealing read.  While _The Prince and
the Prosecutor_ is not intended to be "scholarly," it is factual enough to
hold the interest of this Twain fan and, even more significantly, it proved
to be a welcome diversion from the soul-sapping drudgery of grading a batch
of freshman compositions.

In answer to my query about future Mark Twain Mysteries, Heck replied that
his contract runs to three more books, which are tentatively titled, _The
Guilty Abroad_ (scheduled for publication in December of this year), _The
Mysterious Strangler_ (scheduled for 1999), and _Tom's Lawyer_ (scheduled
for 2000).  It seems that the next few years will continue to yield these
entertaining novels, and I'll certainly look forward to reading them.

An interview with Heck is available at <http://www.amazon.com/>.



Jim McWilliams
[log in to unmask]