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The action of Joseph's coat ranges over more than twenty years, and half-way across the globe, and includes a secret wedding, robbery, forgery, and misappropriation, as well as a mining disaster and dramatic rescue. David Christie Murray's experience as a journalist ensures that that the events following the clandestine marriage of Dinah Banks and Joe Bushell follow each other at an exciting and gripping pace, while at the same time all loose ends are neatly tied up and characters and motives are clearly described. Published in 1881, it was deservedly one of Murray's most popular novels.
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With its well-crafted story, Joseph's coat is a gripping and satisfying read. Characters are subtly drawn, often with a journalist's dry irony. Of Mrs. Bushell, an ardent evangelistic lay preacher, Murray admits
She had more affection in her than anybody gave her credit for, and she loved her only child with so passionate a tenderness that she prayed every night and morning that she might not make an 'idol' of him. In this wise she succeeded in disguising her love so perfectly that young Joe had grown up in the belief that his very presence was distasteful to her.
The twists and turns of the plot owe much to the machinations of young George Banks ("a cad through and through") and Joe Bushell's uncle George, who
could lie, for instance, with a stolidity which defied scrutiny. Practice had done much for him, but the first great gift was Nature's. He was 'inscrutable' enough to have realised a Tory journalist's idea of a prime minister. His respectable countenance, clean-shaven but for its respectable tufts of grey whisker, was scarcely more mobile than a mask. Since he never lied apart from strict necessity, he was commonly regarded as a veracious man.
Despite villainy and deceit, however, love and fidelity eventually wins through, and even old George Bushell wins forgiveness in the end.
Page created 20 December 2002 and last
updated 20 December 2002
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