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Title: Doctor Syn
Series: Doctor Syn #1
Author: Arthur Russell Thorndike
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 209
Words: 69K
This was NOT at all what I was expecting, not one tiny bit. I remembered vague bits of an old Disney show called “The Scarecrow’, a Zorro’esque creature fighting evil and righting wrongs. And that is what I expected here, a man in disguise fighting corrupt authority figures while Robin Hood’ing it for the little guy.
Ha!
This is the final book, chronologically, in the Dr Syn series. It is however, the first published book. I suspect Thorndike wrote this as a standalone story and then just went back and wrote all the rest of the prequels when he needed money.
Dr Syn, a clergyman of all things, is also the Scarecrow, a leader of the smugglers in the Romney Marsh area. He’s smart, well organized and not above sending anyone who gets in his way to an early grave with a bullet in their heart. We also find out that he was an infamous pirate captain that roamed the seas pillaging and looting with the worst of them.
I kept waiting for the redemption arc, but it didn’t happen. Every revelation about Dr Syn just makes him out to be worse and worse and there is no repentance on his part at all. While he has embraced the lifestyle of a clergyman, he has in no way taken to heart anything he apparently preaches on. Complete and utter hypocrisy. I kept waiting for the curtain to come down and his good intentions to be revealed. And it just never happened. It actually shocked me at the end when he is captured and then killed by a harpoon, because he’s in full on pirate mode at that point.
I really wondered if I wanted to read more. I think I will though. I want to see how Syn got the point he’s shown at in this book. In many ways, Syn is a Vader without a Luke and I want to see if the downward trajectory was the same. Redemption, or the lack thereof, is something I’m always interested in when I’m reading a story.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia
Captain Collyer, a Royal Navy officer assigned to smash the local smuggling ring, uncovered the deception and Dr. Syn’s true identity, thanks in part to the tongueless mulatto (who had been rescued by Collyer years before and who had been serving Collyer as a “ferret” seeking out hidden contraband) who recognized Syn as Clegg. Syn evaded capture while at the same time making sure that Imogene and Squire Cobtree’s son Denis (who had fallen in love with Imogene) would have a happy life together (they were eventually married), but was murdered in revenge by the mulatto, who then mysteriously managed to escape, leaving Syn harpooned through the neck. As a last mark of respect, Collyer ordered that Syn be buried at sea, rather than have his body hung in chains.
Mipps escaped in the confusion of Syn’s death and disappeared from England, but it is said that a little man very much like him is living out his days in a Buddhist Monastery somewhere in the Malay Peninsula, delighting the monks with recounting the adventures of Doctor Syn and the eerie stories of the Romney Marsh and the mysterious Scarecrow and his Night Riders.
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