Strange Things That Really Do Happen — Three Detective Anecdotes
After the longer, more admiring piece before it, this one moves fast. Three short cases, told briskly, each one turning on the same trick: a detective gets his result by pretending to be something he isn't, a customer, a friend, a nobody worth noticing.
They're genuinely funny in places. Dickens has an eye for the absurd details, the elaborate small performances these men put on to get a suspect talking. But there's a quieter current running under the humour. Every one of these successes depends on someone being deceived by a person they had no reason to distrust.
That's easy to read past at speed, because the stories move so quickly and land so neatly. Read a little slower and the discomfort is right there on the page, Dickens just isn't the one pointing it out to you.
Something to think about:
these are told almost as entertainment, quick and satisfying. Does the pace of the telling make it easier to overlook how invasive the detectives' methods actually are?
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