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Dr. Thorndyke

443 statements
86 feature instances
23 referencing feature instances

Dr. Thorndyke	type	TVTItem
Dr. Thorndyke	label	Dr. Thorndyke
Dr. Thorndyke	page	DrThorndyke
Dr. Thorndyke	comment	Dr. John Thorndyke is the protagonist of a series of detective stories written by R. Austin Freeman and originally published between 1907 and 1942. The series consists of forty short stories, and twenty one novels.Trained as both a physician and a lawyer, Dr. Thorndyke is a prototypical forensic scientist, focusing on physical evidence rather than personalities and motivations when solving a mystery. He refers to this combined practice as 'medico-legal jurisprudence'.Freeman stated in articles that his intention in writing Thorndyke was to subvert what he felt were overused and clichéd tropes in other stories inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Rather than a Defective Detective who suffers from Good is Not Nice and is Surrounded by Idiots, he wrote Thorndyke as a brilliant but humble man whose only vice (according to himself) is for Trichinopoly cheroots (a particularly disgusting variety of cigar) and who generally has great respect for the police. Even when Inspector Lestrade type characters do appear, Thorndyke is always polite to them (while winking at his sidekick Jervis and the reader). Freeman was also keen to ground his stories in scientific accuracy (as it stood at the time) and, for example, the short story collection John Thorndyke's Cases includes examples of how Freeman proved the evidence used in the stories was realistic, such as photographs of hair follicles under the microscope.Many of the stories use the Reverse Whodunnit form, in which the audience is first shown the murderer planning and committing the crime and the suspense comes from the question of how Dr. Thorndyke will catch them out. Freeman is credited as the inventor of this form by many, and regardless was certainly one of the earliest authors known to have used it.Adaptations of the Thorndyke stories are few and far between. A TV adaptation from 1964 is entirely lost except the pilot. Two stories, A Message from the Deep Sea and The Moabite Cypher, were adapted for the 1970s ITV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, with Thorndyke played by John Neville and Barrie Ingham respectively. More recently (2011) there have been radio adaptations on The BBC.
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Dr. Thorndyke	parsed	2023-11-03T01:47:14Z
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_12c65d9b	type	Abnormal Ammo
Dr. Thorndyke / int_12c65d9b	comment	Abnormal Ammo: In "The Aluminium Dagger", the specially-made titular weapon was shot out of a Chassepot rifle to create one of the most far-fetched locked-room murder mysteries yet.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_1300dc5c	type	Inspector Lestrade
Dr. Thorndyke / int_1300dc5c	comment	Inspector Lestrade: Inspector Badger fits the trope best. Superintendant Miller has a tendency to latch on to the first suspect he can find and try to push them into a confession, but is never dismissive of Thorndyke's abilities to see beyond the obvious. Later books also feature Inspector Blandy, who is clever and insightful but ends up with Thorndyke as his Always Someone Better.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_1777688d	type	Genre Savvy
Dr. Thorndyke / int_1777688d	comment	Genre Savvy: Jervis turns into this after a few books, noting in his narrative that while he can't see the purpose of Thorndyke's latest inexplicable fascination with apparently irrelevant evidence, he knows from past experience that it will inevitably turn out to be crucial.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_1ba17583	type	The Ghost
Dr. Thorndyke / int_1ba17583	comment	The Ghost: Jervis' wife Juliet, who he meets in the first story The Red Thumb-mark and is mentioned to be courting in The Mystery of 31 New Inn, yet is barely mentioned in any other story except for brief appearances in When Rogues Fall Out and the short stories "A Wastrel's Romance" and "The Old Lag". Notably Jervis is often described as living in Thorndyke's chambers as though he was still a bachelor. This is eventually explained in Jervis' narration in When Rogues Fall Out:
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_1e4a1e0e	type	I Owe You My Life
Dr. Thorndyke / int_1e4a1e0e	comment	I Owe You My Life: Polton regards Thorndyke as having saved his life when he was destitute and hero-worships him as a result, while Thorndyke would rather treat him as a friend and equal.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_2a7b0247	type	Could Say It, But...
Dr. Thorndyke / int_2a7b0247	comment	Could Say It, But...: In "The Aluminium Dagger", Inspector Badger assures Mr. Curtis that his daughter isn't a suspect, and makes a point of saying that he won't even ask if she is left-handed — thereby learning, from Mr. Curtis's involuntary reaction, the answer to the question he isn't asking.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_2ae29c0d	type	The Dreaded
Dr. Thorndyke / int_2ae29c0d	comment	The Dreaded: Thorndyke rapidly becomes this to criminals, and in many later stories much of the plot revolves around ensuring that the criminals don't find out that Thorndyke is on the case until they can be trapped, or else they would just flee the country.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_2b2a1700	type	Master of Unlocking
Dr. Thorndyke / int_2b2a1700	comment	Master of Unlocking: Polton, who has developed a device for the purpose euphemistically referred to as "the smoker's companion".
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_2d363f63	type	Frame-Up
Dr. Thorndyke / int_2d363f63	comment	Frame-Up: Part of the backstory of Mr. Pottermack's Oversight is an incident where a bank clerk embezzled his employer and then framed another clerk.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_2ffb4a4d	type	The Nondescript
Dr. Thorndyke / int_2ffb4a4d	comment	The Nondescript: Mr Ethelbert Snuper, a professional spy and tail employed by Thorndyke in several stories, including Felo de Se. Dr Jervis is completely unable to recognise him every time they meet, despite having met him before.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_33987735	type	Disposing of a Body
Dr. Thorndyke / int_33987735	comment	Disposing of a Body: In The Stoneware Monkey, the victim's body is incinerated in a potter's kiln.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_3437ee2c	type	Inheritance Murder
Dr. Thorndyke / int_3437ee2c	comment	Inheritance Murder: In "The Stranger's Latchkey", the heir to a fortune goes missing, and suspicion falls on his cousin, who was with him just before he disappeared and who stands to inherit half the fortune if he dies. It's the right motive, but the wrong suspect; the culprit turns out to be the person who is in line for the other half.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_34642505	type	The Edwardian Era
Dr. Thorndyke / int_34642505	comment	The Edwardian Era: The setting of the earliest stories, and though theoretically the later ones are set in the 1930s, they still tend to feel as though they have more in common with this time than the Genteel Interbellum Setting.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_3b113b7	type	Character Development
Dr. Thorndyke / int_3b113b7	comment	Character Development: In the first Thorndyke story, The Red Thumb-mark, Christopher Jervis is a straightforward Dr Watson clone; later on he develops more of a unique sardonic character, often taking amusement at the astonishment of new characters to Thorndyke's skills (many of whom replace him as The Watson in that story).
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_3ec18c6f	type	Sherlock Scan
Dr. Thorndyke / int_3ec18c6f	comment	The story (and series) is heavily inspired by Sherlock Holmes, and makes fun of how implausible and how much guesswork the Sherlock Scan is...but the guess turns out to be accidentally correct. These days, the Scan, parodies, criticisms, and general riffs on it are all quite common, including in actual Holmes adaptations.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_3ed23024	type	Surprisingly Realistic Outcome
Dr. Thorndyke / int_3ed23024	comment	Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: In stereotypical detective stories, the bad guy of the week is usually caught, killed trying to evade justice, or killed by their criminal associates in a Karmic Death. But sometimes Thorndyke's target in the shorts simply vanishes. After Thorndyke becomes famous, he tries to investigate crimes as inconspicuously as possible, because criminals are likely to just run away when they realize the legendary Dr. is on the case.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_4604fd4d	type	Worthy Opponent
Dr. Thorndyke / int_4604fd4d	comment	Worthy Opponent: Mr Pottermack in Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, who uses a command of forensic detail equal to Thorndyke's in order to lay a false trail. Only one tiny mistake—the Oversight of the title—allows Thorndyke to work out the truth. In The Red Thumb-mark Thorndyke is so busy admiring the clever way the villain tried to murder him that Jervis has to remind him he should be angry about it.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_4b9f810d	type	Great Big Library of Everything
Dr. Thorndyke / int_4b9f810d	comment	Great Big Library of Everything: Though it's not that physically large, Thorndyke has himself compiled a library of books containing information on past criminal cases and a bewilderingly comprehensive variety of potential evidence. He once demonstrated that a body had been moved rather than the victim killed in situ purely from the variety of pond weed found on the corpse.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_4cca4ac7	type	Trapped by Gambling Debts
Dr. Thorndyke / int_4cca4ac7	comment	Trapped by Gambling Debts: Part of the backstory in "The Man with the Nailed Shoes" — the murder victim was part of a criminal gang who had previously lured a bank clerk into running up substantial gambling debts as leverage to make him help them defraud the bank. In the present, the former bank clerk is the main suspect for the murder (but it turns out to have been another member of the gang who did the murder and framed the bank clerk to knock down two birds with one stone).
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_4f4372e9	type	Early-Installment Weirdness
Dr. Thorndyke / int_4f4372e9	comment	Early-Installment Weirdness: The Red Thumb-mark features a more late Victorian romantic storytelling style (in part due to the subplot of Jervis' nascent romance) which some might consider Glurge. In one early story Polton's first name is given as Francis rather than the later Nathaniel. There are a few action scenes early on featuring Thorndyke and Jervis clashing directly with villains, which feel out of character for most of the series.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_4fff0dfe	type	Sarcasm-Blind
Dr. Thorndyke / int_4fff0dfe	comment	Sarcasm-Blind: While Thorndyke isn't actually like this, he often comes across as it due to his habit of seemingly taking sarcastic suggestions from Jervis or the police (which he had already planned to do anyway) such as analysing all the dust in a flat in Felo de Se.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_518de95b	type	Always Murder
Dr. Thorndyke / int_518de95b	comment	Always Murder: There are a few Thorndyke stories that do not feature murder, but they are rare. (One example is "The Anthropologist at Large", in John Thorndyke's Cases, which revolves around a robbery of valuable artworks.) Freeman noted in his article "The Art of the Detective Story" that murder is so popular a choice because it helps justify a villain desperate to cover his tracks given the consequences if he is caught.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_559db5c1	type	TheUriahGambit
Dr. Thorndyke / int_559db5c1	comment	The Uriah Gambit: Mentioned by name in The Shadow of the Wolf, though it wasn't the murderer's primary motive for killing his victim (as Thorndyke speculates it might be at one point).
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_5bc1ce14	type	Author Vocabulary Calendar
Dr. Thorndyke / int_5bc1ce14	comment	Author Vocabulary Calendar: Freeman liked to use the word 'singular' (rather than unusual or unique), particularly in Thorndyke's voice.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_5d41eb9	type	Figure It Out Yourself
Dr. Thorndyke / int_5d41eb9	comment	Figure It Out Yourself: Thorndyke, constantly, to The Watson, the police, and his clients. They find this somewhat frustrating.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_6627695f	type	Author Appeal
Dr. Thorndyke / int_6627695f	comment	Author Appeal: A number of recurring elements such as West Africa, Egyptology, sculpture and pottery, and an Asshole Victim being a blackmailer to allow for a sympathetic villain (in Thorndyke's eyes).
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_680f950	type	Gilligan Cut
Dr. Thorndyke / int_680f950	comment	Gilligan Cut: In The Shadow of the Wolf, it cuts from the villain Varney gloating that he has used his engraving skills (being an expert forger) to fake a letter from the man he has killed, to Thorndyke viewing the letter and immediately working out it is a fake from studying the forged franking mark on the stamp. Of course, it helped that Thorndyke had already worked out that the man in question was probably dead before being presented with the letter.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_6bda9a30	type	Meaningful Name
Dr. Thorndyke / int_6bda9a30	comment	Meaningful Name: Mr Snuper the snooper, as lampshaded by Jervis.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_6d7cd3e	type	Dead Person Impersonation
Dr. Thorndyke / int_6d7cd3e	comment	Dead Person Impersonation: The plot twist of Felo de Se.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_6ee10e0	type	My Greatest Failure
Dr. Thorndyke / int_6ee10e0	comment	My Greatest Failure: In "The Mandarin's Pearl", Thorndyke figures out the nature of the villains' murder plot while the prospective victim is still alive, but arrives too late to do any more than ensure that the villains are unmasked and the authorities informed of what they've done. The final sentence of the story informs the reader that he never forgave himself for not being quicker.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_710f3133	type	Just One Little Mistake
Dr. Thorndyke / int_710f3133	comment	Just One Little Mistake: Mr. Pottermack's Oversight is named after the one little mistake that Mr. Pottermack makes while covering up the evidence of his crime. Thorndyke, the only person who noticed it, reveals it during their final conversation.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_737a65f4	type	The Watson
Dr. Thorndyke / int_737a65f4	comment	The Watson: Dr Christopher Jervis fills the role in many stories, but in others it is taken by a book-specific protagonist narrator (sometimes with Jervis appearing as a secondary character). It doesn't help that Thorndyke absolutely refuses to give his friend a single hint, ever, much to the latter's chagrin. At best, all he and the audience can do is make guesses based on what evidence Thorndyke has collected. Sometimes, the current Watson is actually the story's main protagonist, and the good doctor becomes more of a Supporting Protagonist or co-protagonist.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_75f626a5	type	Nostalgia Filter
Dr. Thorndyke / int_75f626a5	comment	Nostalgia Filter: Discussed Trope. "Memory is like a sundial - it only measures the sunlit hours".
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_77538ed4	type	Admiring the Abomination
Dr. Thorndyke / int_77538ed4	comment	In The Red Thumb-mark Thorndyke is so busy admiring the clever way the villain tried to murder him that Jervis has to remind him he should be angry about it.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_7f080f98	type	Vague Age
Dr. Thorndyke / int_7f080f98	comment	Vague Age: Thorndyke's assistant Nathaniel Polton's description makes him sound older than Thorndyke, but in his backstory in Mr. Polton Explains, he is described as being younger than Thorndyke when they first met.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_8015df5d	type	Reverse Whodunnit
Dr. Thorndyke / int_8015df5d	comment	Reverse Whodunnit: Freeman is credited with inventing the Reverse Whodunit as a trope. Four of the five stories in his 1912 collection The Singing Bone are structured in two parts, with the first part being the criminal committing the deed and the second part being Dr. Thorndyke solving the crime. Freeman would do this again with the two stories that were paired together in 1918's The Great Portrait Mystery. There are also variations such as The Shadow of the Wolf, in which the narrative cuts between the murderer (a skilled engraver and forger) creating a false trail to try to show his victim has absconded but is still alive, and Thorndyke using the faked evidence itself to trace it back to the murderer.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_86c2950b	type	Murder by Suicide
Dr. Thorndyke / int_86c2950b	comment	Murder by Suicide: The villains of "The Mandarin's Pearl" prey on their victim, who is already suffering a mental illness, by faking a series of ghostly apparations and planting the idea in his head that the spectre can only be appeased by his death.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_8a9eb844	type	Perspective Flip
Dr. Thorndyke / int_8a9eb844	comment	Perspective Flip: The stories told from Jervis' perspective (or a similar Watson character) can make it seem as though Thorndyke works everything out almost immediately and simply refuses to discuss it until he has proof. However, The Shadow of the Wolf, a Reverse Whodunnit told alternatingly from Thorndyke's perspective and the murderer's (albeit in the third person) gives insight into his thoughts and shows that he is actually debating between multiple possible theories until the true one becomes apparent.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_8e20979	type	Wham Episode
Dr. Thorndyke / int_8e20979	comment	Wham Episode: When Rogues Fall Out, which features the return of the villain from the first book The Red Thumb-mark and the murder of recurring Inspector Lestrade character Inspector Badger.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_8ed5c6e4	type	Asshole Victim
Dr. Thorndyke / int_8ed5c6e4	comment	Asshole Victim: James Lewson, in Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, is guilty of such infamies that Dr. Thorndyke is driven to remark that "hanging would be a great deal too good for him", and in the end he lets Lewson's killer off.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_9099c21c	type	GPS Evidence
Dr. Thorndyke / int_9099c21c	comment	GPS Evidence: The key piece of evidence in "A Message from the Deep Sea" is a scattering of sand containing forams (microscopic organisms that live in the sediment on the seafloor), including individuals of a species found only in a particular region of the eastern Mediterranean.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_953626a3	type	Literalist Snarking
Dr. Thorndyke / int_953626a3	comment	Literalist Snarking: In "The Stranger's Latchkey", Jervis is telling a group of acquaintances about his work with Thorndyke when one of them implies that she thinks Thorndyke is all brain and no heart, and asks if he's "at all human". Jervis responds by listing the anatomical features, such as an opposed thumb and an upright bipedal gait, that mark Thorndyke as an example of the species homo sapiens. When she attempts to clarify that she wants to know if Thorndyke is "human in things that matter", Jervis replies that clearly an upright bipedal gait does matter because Thorndyke's legal career would be seriously impeded if he went around on all fours.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_99298c71	type	Better to Die than Be Killed
Dr. Thorndyke / int_99298c71	comment	Better to Die than Be Killed: The murderer in "The Aluminium Dagger" shoots himself when he realises his arrest is imminent.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_9b1e50bd	type	During the War
Dr. Thorndyke / int_9b1e50bd	comment	During the War: In the Thorndyke books, 'the war' is always World War One. It is rarely referred to as an ongoing event but frequently in retrospect; Thorndyke even mentions the Zeppelin raids on London in 1915 in the short story Gleanings From The Wreckage.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_9c4a7090	type	Springtime for Hitler
Dr. Thorndyke / int_9c4a7090	comment	Springtime for Hitler: In The Red Thumb-mark Thorndyke attempts to critique the Sherlock Scan trope by observing a man from his window, noting his gait implies his job requires him to stand for long periods, and therefore concluding he is a stationmaster - before pointing out that there might be many other reasons for him to have stood for long periods. However, Polton turns out to actually know the man in question and promptly reports that he is a stationmaster.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_9c8701b5	type	A Day in the Limelight
Dr. Thorndyke / int_9c8701b5	comment	A Day in the Limelight: Mr. Polton Explains is one for Polton. The character of Robin Anstey, a lawyer whose usual only function in the story is because Thorndyke can't simultaneously be acting for the defence and be in the witness box, also gets to take on the Watson role in The Cat's-eye a few short stories.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_9d12bbc1	type	Foreshadowing
Dr. Thorndyke / int_9d12bbc1	comment	Foreshadowing: In Helen Vardon's Confession, a sub-plot involves one of Helen's friends in Miss Polton's house of female craftsmen, Winifred 'Lilith' Blake, who then goes on to be the main female character in the next full-length novel, The Cat's-eye, where she becomes Robin Anstey's love interest and eventual wife.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_9fc60cc5	type	Glurge
Dr. Thorndyke / int_9fc60cc5	comment	The Red Thumb-mark features a more late Victorian romantic storytelling style (in part due to the subplot of Jervis' nascent romance) which some might consider Glurge.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_a1b0c1c2	type	Revealing Cover-Up
Dr. Thorndyke / int_a1b0c1c2	comment	Revealing Cover-Up: A number of times, Thorndyke states that many otherwise competent criminals suffering from Complexity Addiction fall victim to this trope. He notes that some of them pull off a perfect crime that not even he would be able to trace or prove, but then expose themselves due to the compulsion to cover their non-existent tracks.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_a4c8e609	type	Glad You Thought of It
Dr. Thorndyke / int_a4c8e609	comment	Glad You Thought of It: Thorndyke will ascribe plans he had already made to being ideas of Jervis or the police. This is partly sometimes as a joke or cover, but Thorndyke is also often happy to let the police take credit for his discoveries.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_a91078ea	type	Adaptational Jerkass
Dr. Thorndyke / int_a91078ea	comment	Adaptational Jerkass: In the stories adapted for the TV series The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Thorndyke is depicted as more aloof and arrogant than his literary counterpart.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_aa42306e	type	Totally Radical
Dr. Thorndyke / int_aa42306e	comment	Totally Radical: Jervis is annoyed by the contemporary version of this in A Wastrel's Romance when he dances with a Flapper to whom "everything is either 'ripping' or 'rotten'."
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_aaf19fae	type	Doesn't Like Guns
Dr. Thorndyke / int_aaf19fae	comment	Doesn't Like Guns: Thorndyke dislikes them, though he has a collection of firearms he will use occasionally when confronting a particularly deadly foe, as in The D'Arblay Mystery:
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_abe75b67	type	FairPlayWhodunit
Dr. Thorndyke / int_abe75b67	comment	Fair Play Whodunit: Freeman regarded this as the only correct form of detective story. Of course, a Running Gag is that Thorndyke will protest to Jervis that he has given him (and the reader) all the facts and he should be able to come to the same conclusion Thorndyke has - apparently innocent of his own brilliance as an investigator.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_ad768026	type	Accident, Not Murder
Dr. Thorndyke / int_ad768026	comment	Accident, Not Murder: In "The Blue Sequin", a woman is found dead in a railway compartment after being stabbed in the head, and the police arrest a man who had been traveling on the same train. Thorndyke's investigation reveals that the woman had stuck her head out of the carriage window to watch a fire the train was passing, and while she was watching that a cattle car loaded with longhorn cattle went past on the other line; due to her distraction and a large fashionable hat blocking part of her field of vision, she didn't notice the cattle car's approach, and her head got in the way of a steer's horn protruding from the cattle car.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_b1b83670	type	Oops! I Forgot I Was Married
Dr. Thorndyke / int_b1b83670	comment	Oops! I Forgot I Was Married: A fair way into Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, Mr. Pottermack proposes to the woman he loves, and she reveals that she already has a husband, whom she walked out on before she met Mr. Pottermack but to whom she is officially still married.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_b55e8979	type	Science Hero
Dr. Thorndyke / int_b55e8979	comment	Science Hero: Thorndyke, especially in the full novels where he is usually acting out of compassion for a victim and out of his own pocket rather than being employed by others to solve a case.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_b593baf1	type	Author Filibuster
Dr. Thorndyke / int_b593baf1	comment	Author Filibuster: All characters written by Freeman, whether hero or villain, will periodically complain about the rotten state of (then-)modern architecture in London and how the heritage of fine seventeenth century houses is vanishing.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_b5b4b077	type	The Ace
Dr. Thorndyke / int_b5b4b077	comment	The Ace: Thorndyke, recognised in-story as the foremost authority on medical jurisprudence. Some of the later book covers even dub him "The Ace of Detectives".
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_b9c673a6	type	Market-Based Title
Dr. Thorndyke / int_b9c673a6	comment	Market-Based Title: Some of the novels were published under other titles in the United States.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_bb0b2739	type	Nested Story
Dr. Thorndyke / int_bb0b2739	comment	Nested Story: In "The Mandarin's Pearl", a significant proportion of the page count is taken up with a detailed history of the eponymous pearl and the misfortunes that befell the people who possessed it before it came into the hands of Thorndyke's client — a history which subsequently proves to be a complete fabrication from start to finish.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_bee8baee	type	Faint in Shock
Dr. Thorndyke / int_bee8baee	comment	Faint in Shock: The murderer in "A Message from the Deep Sea" faints in the coroner's court when Dr. Thorndyke produces conclusive evidence of his guilt.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_c41668cd	type	Needle in a Stack of Needles
Dr. Thorndyke / int_c41668cd	comment	Needle in a Stack of Needles: In "When Rogues Fall Out", Inspector Badger is murdered with a poisoned cigar. Jervis is puzzled when Thorndyke analyses it and finds nothing but nicotine - but a far larger quantity of nicotine than should be there, showing the murderer injected it with a lethal dose of liquid nicotine.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
Dr. Thorndyke / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: Many to seventeenth-century English literature, William Shakespeare and Samuel Pepys.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_c960826	type	Supporting Protagonist
Dr. Thorndyke / int_c960826	comment	Sometimes, the current Watson is actually the story's main protagonist, and the good doctor becomes more of a Supporting Protagonist or co-protagonist.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_d39d4b71	type	The Perfect Crime
Dr. Thorndyke / int_d39d4b71	comment	The Perfect Crime: In Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, Mr. Pottermack covers up the death of James Lewson with considerable ingenuity, the more impressive considering his plan is invented on the spur of the moment and not premeditated. The one flaw is the titular oversight, which nobody but Dr. Thorndyke spots and even he might have missed on any other day. Pottermack covers his tracks so well that when he subsequently realizes that he can't bring his aims to fruition without Lewson being officially declared dead, he has to fake the death of the already dead man in order to have enough evidence for the authorities to act on.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_d48c0702	type	That's What I Would Do
Dr. Thorndyke / int_d48c0702	comment	That's What I Would Do: In his early career Thorndyke considered how he would pull off various crimes and wrote the plans down; later on he finds that many a clever criminal has had the same idea, allowing him to predict what they will do next.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_db4975de	type	The CSI Effect
Dr. Thorndyke / int_db4975de	comment	Imagine there was a novel about a murder, and the cutting-edge forensic technology used to nab the apparent killer, and how such evidence can be acquired and faked with modern technology. You might think it's a cautionary tale about 3D printing or about disclosing personal information on the Internet or something. It's from The Red Thumb Mark, from 1907, and it's about fingerprintingnote The first murder on Earth solved with them was only 15 years old, the first UK criminal case was only 5, and the first UK murder only 2. and how credulous juries can be when it comes to forensic evidence, almost a hundred years before CSI first aired. These days, it's very common for fictional criminals to put someone else's prints on the evidence, or find some other way to fake the forensics, or to just wear gloves and/or wipe down everything.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_db9940c4	type	Famed In-Story
Dr. Thorndyke / int_db9940c4	comment	Famed in Story: Realistically, after his first few triumphs, Thorndyke's name is respected and he no longer has to deal with overly sceptical counsels and juries.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_dc579c91	type	Contrived Coincidence
Dr. Thorndyke / int_dc579c91	comment	Contrived Coincidence: A frequently Discussed Trope, with Thorndyke opining that people are prone to considering coincidences more unlikely than they actually are, and that one should not necessarily be surprised by them cropping up in an investigation. InMr. Polton Explains, the attempted murderer used a clock that Polton himself altered in a very specific way, and once knew Polton personally. Polton may be the only person in the entire British Empire, maybe the world, who could've recognized the clock from the scraps left behind after the fire, much less the fire-starting device that was made with it. Of course, one might argue that this is essentially the same as what Thorndyke himself does with forensic evidence, except he does it through study.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_dcaa8b35	type	Locked Room Mystery
Dr. Thorndyke / int_dcaa8b35	comment	Locked Room Mystery: In "The Aluminium Dagger", the murder victim died while alone in a room that was locked and bolted from the inside.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_dcb40127	type	The Killer Was Left-Handed
Dr. Thorndyke / int_dcb40127	comment	The Killer Was Left-Handed: In "The Aluminium Dagger", Inspector Badger concludes from the angle of entry that the dagger was wielded left-handed, and subsequently arrests a left-handed suspect. Dr. Thorndyke, however, proves that the angle of entry has a different cause unrelated to the murderer's handedness.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_df968cf	type	Insurance Fraud
Dr. Thorndyke / int_df968cf	comment	Insurance Fraud: Mostly in the short stories, Thorndyke and Jervis are sometimes employed by Mr Stalker of the Griffin Life Assurance Office to look into suspicious cases of people who have taken out life insurance policies and then met untimely ends. Of course Stalker is usually keen for them to discover it was suicide (which would invalidate the policy) but the actual outcome Thorndyke finds is often even more unexpected.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_e23fac54	type	Invisible Writing
Dr. Thorndyke / int_e23fac54	comment	Invisible Writing: The twist in "The Moabite Cipher" is that the cipher message is meaningless (it turns out to just be a passage from the Book of Nahum) and meant to distract the inquisitive from discovering the real message which is written on the same piece of paper using a form of invisible writing.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_e28f88b8	type	Last-Name Basis
Dr. Thorndyke / int_e28f88b8	comment	Last-Name Basis: Thorndyke and Jervis call one another by their surnames, and we only learn what Polton's first name is in Mr. Polton Explains.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_e37f19	type	Disguised in Drag
Dr. Thorndyke / int_e37f19	comment	Disguised in Drag: Plays a part in The Mystery of Angelina Frood and The Jacob Street Mystery.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_e54fed84	type	Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin'
Dr. Thorndyke / int_e54fed84	comment	Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin': At one point in Mr. Pottermack's Oversight there is a comedic sequence in which the Sympathetic Murderer tries to get rid of his victim's wallet by deliberately taking it places that are notorious for pickpockets, only to find that when he wants his pocket picked nobody seems interested.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_e563bf09	type	Insistent Terminology
Dr. Thorndyke / int_e563bf09	comment	Insistent Terminology: Thorndyke, Polton and any police inspectors using skeleton keys are always keen to point out that they're not skeleton keys, they're (a choice euphemism that means the same thing) keys.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_eafe9e0e	type	Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen
Dr. Thorndyke / int_eafe9e0e	comment	Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen: Used dramatically in Mr. Pottermack's Oversight. An escaped convict steals a set of clothes he finds on the beach, leaving his own prison uniform behind, after noticing that they've been there some time and concluding that their owner won't be back for them. The dead body of the clothes' owner is washed ashore some time later, ravaged beyond recognition, and taken to be that of the convict.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_f005bd1c	type	Friend on the Force
Dr. Thorndyke / int_f005bd1c	comment	Friend on the Force: Superintendant Miller and, to a lesser extent, Inspector Badger.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_f0e85546	type	Unbuilt Trope
Dr. Thorndyke / int_f0e85546	comment	Unbuilt Trope: Imagine there was a novel about a murder, and the cutting-edge forensic technology used to nab the apparent killer, and how such evidence can be acquired and faked with modern technology. You might think it's a cautionary tale about 3D printing or about disclosing personal information on the Internet or something. It's from The Red Thumb Mark, from 1907, and it's about fingerprintingnote The first murder on Earth solved with them was only 15 years old, the first UK criminal case was only 5, and the first UK murder only 2. and how credulous juries can be when it comes to forensic evidence, almost a hundred years before CSI first aired. These days, it's very common for fictional criminals to put someone else's prints on the evidence, or find some other way to fake the forensics, or to just wear gloves and/or wipe down everything. The story (and series) is heavily inspired by Sherlock Holmes, and makes fun of how implausible and how much guesswork the Sherlock Scan is...but the guess turns out to be accidentally correct. These days, the Scan, parodies, criticisms, and general riffs on it are all quite common, including in actual Holmes adaptations.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_f1d3f0c9	type	Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness
Dr. Thorndyke / int_f1d3f0c9	comment	Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Daniel Penrose in The Penrose Mystery speaks entirely in obtuse allonyms. For example, it's suggested that he would call John Thorndyke "Giovanni Brambleditch".
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_f2bb1fb4	type	Let Off by the Detective
Dr. Thorndyke / int_f2bb1fb4	comment	Let Off by the Detective: In Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, Dr. Thorndyke is the only person who realizes that Mr. Pottermack has anything to do with the death of James Lewson (due to noticing the one detail Mr. Pottermack overlooked), and after establishing the true circumstances he chooses to keep his discoveries to himself.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_f70710ae	type	Blackmail Backfire
Dr. Thorndyke / int_f70710ae	comment	Blackmail Backfire: Type 3 (the blackmailing victim murders the blackmailer) often happens in the stories, not least because Thorndyke sometimes lets the murderer get away with it (or at least views his actions with sympathy and gives him a sporting chance). In Mr. Pottermack's Oversight, the blackmailing victim is presented as particularly sympathetic because he's being blackmailed over a crime which he never even committed, but was framed for by the man now attempting to blackmail him.
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Dr. Thorndyke / int_fbba5e98	type	Gadgeteer Genius
Dr. Thorndyke / int_fbba5e98	comment	Gadgeteer Genius: Nathaniel Polton, Thorndyke's assistant.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	A Day in the Limelight / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Accident, Not Murder / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Always Murder / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Can't Get in Trouble for Nuthin' / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Could Say It, But... / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Dead Person Impersonation / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Defective Detective / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Disposing of a Body / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Doesn't Like Guns / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Eagle-Eye Detection / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Figure It Out Yourself / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Forensic Drama / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Hand Rubbing / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Just One Little Mistake / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Let Off by the Detective / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Lighthouse Point / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Literalist Snarking / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Oops! I Forgot I Was Married / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Refuse to Rescue the Disliked / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	Reverse Whodunnit / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	The Watson / int_daa2340b
Dr. Thorndyke	hasFeature	They Have the Scent! / int_daa2340b

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