Liner Notes for The Wish Fulfilling Jewel Returns

 

Liner Notes for The Wish Fulfilling Jewel Returns

The Wish Fulfilling Jewel is the name of the third act of my novel The Inexplicable Affair Of The Mesmerising Russian Nobleman, which introduces, amongst other characters, The Honourable Katherine Bedford. One joke in the novel and it’s sequel, which admittedly is just for me, is that people are always wondering about fabulous jewellery and exotic gemstones. Edwardian and Victorian crime stories love to be about expensive, and sometimes cursed precious stones. Schneemann though is wise to this and refuses to have anything to do with them*.

The Wish Fulfilling Jewel (Cintamani) is indeed a Buddhist symbol, and also a Hindu one, though Katie’s explanation is almost as wrong as the idea that you can just hand one over. It is a metaphor for the rare achievement of true devotion to the teachings of the Buddha, or, for Hindus, the highest state of worship. It’s also usually depicted as a pearl rather than a yellow stone.

The golden age of crime fiction was dominated by The Detection Club and their rules, including play fair mysteries (something that was perhaps honoured in the breach). That’s not really what I’m doing here! We don’t recall the complicated plots so much as the elegant solutions (Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express and And Then There Were None) yet even those fall into insignificance compared to the characters and the settings. The eccentric detective, perhaps with an active sidekick to explain things to, enters a country house filled with all the archetypes of society the author has an axe to grind with.

Hence my note that I put into the text: “No case was ever entirely about the crime. You could not remove a person from the society they were embedded in, nor take one action from the great fabric of human existence.” To be interested in the crime is to be interested in the people effected by it.

Of course there’s no actual crime here, cats not being held criminally liable for their actions. Unless it turns that out Raj Gubinda has borrowed money under false pretences. Yet if the victim is satisfied, that they helped someone in need, and do not miss the cash, is that really criminal?

Well yes, yes it is. Or at least it is Criminalesque.

* When he breaks that rule in the third novel in the sequence he is arrested and imprisoned. He knew better!