I think Tolkien writes somewhere of “the willing suspension of disbelief.” I’m not sure if he originated the term. But I find it a little ironic that a novel in which he’s a major character makes such a suspension so difficult.

Reviews of The Inklings Detective Agency by John R. Kelly seem to be mostly laudatory. I wanted to join in the praise, but I just can’t do it.

Here’s the premise – we’re asked to believe that the members of the famous Inklings writers’ group dabbled in solving crime in their spare time. (Anyone who knows about Lewis’ life in the late 1930s, when this book is set, will laugh at the idea that he had any free time at all.)

But they’ve never investigated a murder before, until a surprise visitor to one of their meetings (I won’t spoil the secret of his identity for you) asks them to look into the recent deaths of two men, dismissed by the police as suicides. Both men had been involved with a secret society led by the infamous black magician, Aleister Crowley. Various members of the group will pursue different lines of investigation, and such figures as Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie will also make cameo appearances.

Why didn’t I like The Inklings Detective Agency more? First of all, the writing was weak. Sometimes the grammar stumbled, with phrases like “me and MacDougall.” The book was sometimes overwritten, and many speeches could have been shorter. Sometimes the prose was florid, as when we read of “someone with such nefarious evil and darkness in their heart.”

Worse, for me, was the number of linguistic anachronisms. Slang and catch phrases that didn’t originate until decades later abound here – “lights out—that’s all she wrote.” “Letting us crash your bachelor pad” “Food to die for.” “Macro.”

Worst of all was that all women are given the title of Ms. Note for younger readers – up until the 1970s, all women (unless they had professional titles like “Dr.”) were addressed in English as “Miss” or “Mrs.” “Ms.” was confined to southern US dialect back in the 1930s.

The characterizations, as far as I could tell, were pretty good. Lewis acted like Lewis, Tolkien like Tolkien. I know less about the other Inklings, but they seemed to be behaving authentically within the scope of a fictional story.

I did read the book through to the end, because I was curious to find out who the culprit was, and because it’s always pleasant to spend time with the Inklings, even viewed through a glass darkly.

So I can’t say it’s a bad book. I will say it’s clumsily written and poorly tailored to its period. I can’t recommend it, but I won’t deny there was some fun in it.