Explore "The Willow Walk" by Blanche Colton Williams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
PLOT. In constructing his plot, the author devised a plan whereby a robber might escape with stolen money. Having invented it, he tested each part to make it _seem_ detective proof; and in following up this process he created a novel variety of the detective story genre. Similar stories have effected a resolution of the complication by a pull at some loose end left hanging through inadvertence of the criminal, and have so conserved justice. Mr. Lewis, avoiding this usual device, has requisitioned the peculiar advantages of dual personality to bring about the downfall of his criminal. (Compare with this _motif_, the one found in Frederick Stuart Greene's "Galway Intrudes," a story which has much in common with "The Willow Walk. ")
A thief, therefore, who plans his get-away by first _inventing_ and then _pretending_ to be his own "brother," ultimately becomes the brother. The transformation is made plausible through the histrionic gifts attributed to the robber whereby he _is_, rather than merely _acts_, the represented character.