Title: The Murderer's Ape
Author: Jakob Wegelius
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Pages: 605
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Henry Koskela, Chief to Sally Jones, the gorilla he rescued, is arrested for the murder of Aphonse Morro. He has motive. It was Morro that had sent him on a misadventure that caused him to lose his beloved boat, the Hudson Queen, and their hard-earned savings. But Koskela has no way to prove his innocence.
Only Sally Jones knows that her Chief has done nothing wrong. That he did not seek to kill Morro. That Morro fell by accident. But what can an ape do? Particularly when powerful people are determined to keep him imprisoned forever.
Now Sally Jones is on the run from the powerful men who want to bring anarchy to Portugal. Luckily, she meets Ana Molina, a young woman with an angelic voice who works in a shoe factory. Soon Ana’s friends become the friends of Sally Jones, but danger is never far away from Sally Jones.
The story is told in the first person past tense PoV of Sally Jones, not Sally. Always Sally Jones. It is, in fact, being typed out by her on a typewriter, long after the incidents described in the book are over.
This book started well. I didn’t realise who the narrator was until the last line on the first page when she said that her fur is itchy with coal dust. As a character, Sally Jones had great potential. She is literate, she can type, repair stuff, play chess and she serves as first engineer on a ship.
As a rule, I don’t read fantasy, but this one was targeted at children and promised to be warm and fuzzy. So I made an exception. The characters were all sweet, but not really unforgettable. Sally Jones herself didn’t live up to her potential. The adversaries weren’t really evil, in keeping with the target audience. This is children’s fiction after all.
The writing was sweet, especially the scenes where Sally Jones meets the Chief after their prolonged separation.
The writer does a good job with the time period. Set in the early 20th century, there are accordions, motor boats, steamers, typewriters etc. Illustrations of these would have helped young readers to get an understanding of older technologies.
But there was tremendous room for improvement. For the greater part of the book, the Chief was in jail, serving a sentence of 25 years in prison. Considering that the Chief and Sally Jones were the main characters, they both should have a greater role to play in the book. As it is, the story picks up the thread of the plot only with about 100 pages to spare.
With the Chief stuck in jail, Sally Jones is sent off on a grand adventure, heading off to Egypt and spending a long spell in India, beating a king at chess and being his confidante, but not really advancing the plot of the story. Given that the title of the book is The Murderer’s Ape, I thought that Sally Jones should have been shown to be doing more to get the Chief released.
It’s a fantasy after all. If the author could make her literate, able to understand English, why not get her to grunt some words? If she is good at “fixing broken things”, why not make her use that skill to enable the Chief’s release rather than spending time fixing broken accordions with nothing to break the monotony for the Chief. The poor guy spends years in prison.
Also, at 605 pages, it is much too long and the pace far too slow. Young ones are bound to lose interest in such a heavy tome. I do think the author could have done more to bring out the themes of love and friendship, loyalty and innocence. As it is, with Sally Jones travelling around the world, those themes get diluted a fair bit.
The illustrations, the grainy pencil sketches were charming, quaint and inviting.
(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)
