Mr. Bowling Buys a Newspaper by Donald Henderson


Almost everyone who writes about this novel notes that it evokes a milieu similar to the one through which George Harvey Bone moves in Patrick Hamilton's Hangover Square. Although Hamilton's novel is set just before World War II and Henderson's during the war, Bowling and Bone are similarly alienated and exist in the same seedy London. 

What I haven't seen anyone mention is the possibility that James Hogg's Memoirs of a Justified Sinner was also an inspiration. Like Hogg's gothic masterpiece, Mr. Bowling is about a murderer who manages to justify his crimes at least in part through an appeal to his faith. Mr. Bowling finds in his Christianity the excuse that if he happens to kill someone, he is carrying out God's will, because how could he be doing otherwise? He reflects on one of his victims: 

He thought, instead, upon matters do do with Destiny, wondering, for instance, whether up in God's Kingdom, there had long ago been placed a little flag, marking in very neat print: "This is the Time and the Hour for a poor old chap called Delius Nandle: he will be killed for no particular worldly reason—but for My reason."

Further, though Bowling wants to die, his faith won't allow him to kill himself. He hopes, therefore, that his crimes will be found out and that he will be executed instead. When that doesn't happen after his first murder, he keeps trying.

There is little humor in Justified Sinner, but a great deal in Mr Bowling, albeit of the blackest, most macabre kind. We have, for example, a sense that there is something odd and disconcerting about Mr. Bowling's appearance. It is described in a way that can only make us chuckle: "His head was queerly shaped, barbers must be fascinated; not unlike a rather neat mangold wurzle. I'm not sure if the spelling of "mangelwurzel" is part of the joke or a Britishism of the time. I had to look it up, but it was funny even before I knew what a "mangold wurzle" was.

Finally, Mr. Bowling is a frustrated musician, or as he puts it, "just a poor devil with an artistic soul, ruined by education." It is hard to believe that this is incidental, given that another frustrated artist was on a murderous rampage in Europe at the same time Bowling was committing his crimes.

(Hat tip to JacquiWine who made me aware of this novel.)

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