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Title: The Man in Lower Ten
Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
Narrator: Grover Gardner
Format: Unabridged
Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
Language: English
Release date: 07-25-17
Publisher: Audio Book Contractors, LLC
Ratings: 4.5 of 5 out of 2 votes
Genres: Classics, American Literature
Publisher's Summary:
A young lawyer survives a ghastly train wreck only to be accused of murdering a man who accidentally fell asleep in the wrong berth! This is another whirlwind of a whodunit by the author of The Circular Staircase.
Members Reviews:
Dangerous Train Travel
I understand from other reviews that this is an early Mary Rinehart mystery which may explain the confusing plot. I did enjoy the main characters, and I loved the 1906 setting. Cars were so rare that their owners named them, and trains were a vital part of American life--a great place for a murder. Worth the read.
Caveat: Rinehart uses terms for African-Americans that are clearly offensive, and she portrays black servants as little more than children in adult bodies. It can be jarring in 2016.
Too many coincidences!
Novels of certain eras really love to have all of their characters impossibly connected, and this is one of them. It's just one unrealistic coincidence after another. For me, a few ridiculous connections in a novel are quaint, this many were annoying. Every character (including minor ones like a maid) have connections to multiple characters.
For instance, the maid mentioned works for one of the suspects but also has an aunt working for the family of our hero's love interest. If that sounds confusing, it's because it is. It's like piecing together an incestuous family tree ("so he is the uncle, but also the brother?"). And why did Rinehart even feel the need to include such minute and silly details?
It isn't just social and familial coincidences, though, the plot is full of them too. The murder is somehow simultaneous with two frauds (one related to the murder and one not), crimes of passion (again one related and one not), a silly musical chairs-type confluence of events, improbable actions by the criminals, AND a literal train wreck. ....SPOILER ALERT..... (((Then the ONLY survivors are ALL the people involved in the crime! Ugh.......))))
I didn't care for the love story, again because of too many silly coincidences, but also because there is a bit of damsel in distress to it, and because I don't really care for the girl. She has information in a murder investigation that could help keep the hero out of jail and hides it because it's a little embarrassing. She seems to fall for every guy (and gets proposed to by ALL men *eyeroll*), and is loved and adored by all, but we are never given any reason for this other than she is pretty.
However, the main character is generally likeable (even though he betrays his best friend), and there are several funny bits and witty dialogue.
110 years old and still worth reading
Mary Roberts Rinehart was one of the most popular and prolific American authors of the first half of the 20th Century. She's sometimes called "The American Agatha Christie." I often wonder what she thought about this back-handed compliment, since THE MAN IN LOWER TEN (her first book) preceded Christie's AFFAIR AT STYLES by 14 years. Both were female and prolific and wrote mysteries, but there are few other similarities that I can see.
Whereas Christie followed the time-honored recipe of a professional detective and his sidekick, Rinehart's mysteries are novels with a mystery thrown in. Her characters (IMHO) are more finely drawn and her romances are witty and realistic.
This is one of her books with a narrator and one of only three with a male narrator.
