Grobius Shortling's John Dickson Carr (Carter Dickson) Page
(without reservation the best of the "Golden Age" mystery writers)
JOHN DICKSON CARR (1906-1977)
John Dickson Carr (Carter Dickson) was the best of the "Golden-Age"
detective story writers when it came to atmosphere and ingenious
plotting. He was an American expatriate (well, copatriate, if that's a word) who set most of his books
in Britain. The early books tended toward Grand Guignol phantasmagorical effects. Many of his stories also contained various degrees
of Wodehouse-like comedy (especially the Henry Merrivales). Later
in life, he took to writing historical mysteries, ranging from
mediocre to absolutely brilliant. One very bad habit he got into
(especially in the books he wrote as he got older, and probably a
stylistic trait developed when he wrote radio plays in the 1940s)
was to try to convey descriptive information through the dialogue:
"Here we are at London Bridge; you see over there where they used
to spike traitors' heads, but they stopped doing that last year.
Wait, is that J----?" (the interruption indicates another of his
irritating devices to generate suspense; you don't find out what the
J---- thing was about until later, if ever). Mannerisms such as these
do not appear in his best books, although he always used cliff- hanger chapter endings -- the Uncle Wiggley approach to storytelling.
An expertise at which Carr excelled was conveying an atomosphere of
the supernatural in his settings and the circumstances of his murders.
Actually, in some cases, the supernatural really does apply (THE
BURNING COURT). The murders are almost always pretty gruesome
(as in DEATH WATCH and IT WALKS BY NIGHT), but the victim often
deserved it, in which cases the murderer is sometimes let go; in other
cases a decent person is murdered and the villain turns out to be
truly nasty and gets his deserved comeuppance. (Possibly, one reason why so many murderers in JDC books are allowed to commit suicide is that death by hanging was almost a foregone conclusion then, regardless of motive.)
Except when the plot twists are extremely complicated, you will
usually kick yourself when you learn the solution. A lot of it depends
on misdirection (e.g., his most famous puzzle, THE THREE COFFINS,
is basically a matter of the order the chapters are written in). A real
'Of course, damn it' solution can be found in THE PROBLEM OF THE
GREEN CAPSULE. Every now and then, a story will fail because too
much depends on luck and coincidence (THE MAN WHO COULD NOT
SHUDDER -- a mechanical device nobody would ever depend on to
work properly or kill the right person), or the premise is just silly
(THE PROBLEM OF THE WIRE CAGE -- you won't believe how crazy
that is and how stupid the victim was).
Apart from Henri Bencolin (who was given up early as a detective), Carr
pretty much stuck to his series detectives Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale.
There were some others, who didn't really work out -- Dermot Kinross,
John Gaunt, Patrick Rossiter, Patrick Butler (borrowed from G. K. Chesterton),
Colonel March, Colonel Marquis (an abortive early version of March), Edgar
Allan Poe (once, in the classic short story "The Gentleman from Paris"),
and some real people in his Historicals. These detectives were either too bland,
or too much on the drunken/seedy side to catch on with the reading public.
There were several recurring persons (usually point-of-view characters and police).
He wrote books under two names basically because he was very prolific
in the 1930s and ended up with two publishers (too many books for one
to handle). But although most of his themes, such as 'impossible crimes',
are mostly the same, it worked out well -- there is a distinctive difference
in subject and approach between the 'two' authors (in fact, he could have
done with yet another pseudonym for the Historical novels, and did come
up with one, Roger Fairbairn, for one book).
I. Doctor Gideon Fell Series
(Dr. Fell is first described as a 'lexicographer'; he is a professor, who doesn't profess, at least in the books. Physically,
he is very fat, with a mop of gray-white hair and a Pancho Villa moustache --
based pretty much on G. K. Chesterton. He wheezes, and has to
walk with two canes. He likes to wear a large black cape and
a shovel hat [don't really know what that is, but you'd probably
laugh if you saw anybody dressed like that today]. His
specialty is the locked-room, or 'impossible', murder. Fell's
'Watson' is Inspector Hadley. There are also some other recurring characters (Americans), such as Rampole and Melson, who are used as point-of-view characters to excuse solecisms about English language and custom. A favorite catch-phrase is
"Archons of Athens.")
1. HAG'S NOOK (1933) *
(An old haunted prison in Lincolnshire, wonderfully creepy; atmospheric but a let-down plotwise*; nasty villain)
[This has the lexicographer thing; Fell not fully defined yet; PS, look here for an ancillary web page about Hag's Nook]
* Granted, it all works out very well for the murderer in an opportunistic way and is very cleverly misleading according to the narration, based on an assumption that an exprerienced Carr reader would learn not to make. That bit is brilliant, plus the character and motives of the surprise villain.
2. THE MAD HATTER MYSTERY (1933) ***
(Tower of London; nicely done, one of Carr's best-constructed plots*, with some very sympathetic characters)
[In some ways, one of his best books -- the combinations of his talents work well here without clashing]
* The only dubious point is the assumption that one could depend on catching a tube train (subway) right away -- twice, no less -- without having to wait 20 minutes or encounter some delay or breakdown. However, one has to assume that like the post office, public services were more efficient back then than they are now.
3. THE EIGHT OF SWORDS (1934)
(Mediocre country cosy, with gangsters* and primitive farcical comedy; but bang-up ending)
[A transitional Carr, where he was mixing creepy melodramatic set-pieces, complex murder scenarios, and Wodehousian comedy with idiotic 'young people' and drunken hijinks]
* It is surprising that Carr, as an American, couldn't manage the idiom very well when it came to what he thought of as gangsterese. However, he never exhibited any talent for handling slang in any of his books. In dialogue, he is no Elmore Leonard!
4. THE BLIND BARBER (1934) **
(Set on board an ocean liner; great hijinks; almost Marx Brothers)
[The most blatantly, sustainedly comic of his books, with a lot of drunken* shenanigans and a truly ditzy heroine, great plot with armchair detection by Fell after the fact, but flawed in a way because nobody seems to care about the poor, unknown, victim -- murder is a serious business, sir!]
* Drinking and smoking feature prominently in JDC books. No problem except that attitudes to those activities have changed in 50 years -- the US postage stamp of Humphrey Bogart erased his cigarette, for example. Modern readers must be prepared to find alcoholism presented as either sheer fun or pathetic (the latter case basically implying some sort of character flaw where the person can't handle getting drunk all the time and still functioning). The effect of drinking on the characters usually results in some really funny comedic situations, even if it comes across as very adolescent and naive.
5. DEATH-WATCH (1935)
(Gruesome murder in a London town house, excessively improbable but with 'good' bad characters and creepy atmosphere; violates one of JDC's prime 'locked-room' rules, however)
[Unnecessarily complex because of a lack of clarity in the narrative -- lots of weird scenes interwoven with little explanation of who was doing what and why*]
* The motivation for the murder and especially the secondary plot, unless one could say the villain was absolutely bonkers, is very weak and unsatisfactory.
6. THE THREE COFFINS (1935) (The Hollow Man) ***
(London; the most famous locked-room murder; excellent; a 'must-read')
[But click here for a heretical review]
7. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS MURDER (1936) **
(A phantasmagoria in a London museum; complex and funny; great narrative technique from various voices, although the coincidences in the cellar are incredible*)
[Sort of a Rashomon plot -- same weird events from different viewpoints; the statement of the Scottish minister is one of Carr's best tour-de-forces of comedy]
* All a matter of timing, which could only have worked out that way because the author arranged it. This could have happened, but if a single incident were off by a minute, the whole thing would have been chaos.
8. TO WAKE THE DEAD (1938)
(Country village murder; odd alibi)
9. THE CROOKED HINGE (1938) **
(Country-house murder; creepy setting; flashback to the Titanic; one of the best except for a major flaw about somebody squatting over the body)
[Very good mixture of convincing characters*, witchcraft, and alternate solutions, but a disappointing ending]
* It's interesting to see where Carr's sympathies fall in regard to his characters; one would normally tend to another view.
10. THE PROBLEM OF THE GREEN CAPSULE (1939) (The Black Spectacles) **
(An 'impossible' crime; the gimmick is brilliant)
11. THE PROBLEM OF THE WIRE CAGE (1939)
(Country house; an 'impossible' no-footprints crime; improbable)
12. THE MAN WHO COULD NOT SHUDDER (1940)
(Country-house locked-room murder by remote control; improbable)
13. THE CASE OF THE CONSTANT SUICIDES (1941) **
(Scottish castle; superb locked-room murders and drunken hijinks)
14. DEATH TURNS THE TABLES (1942) (The Seat of the Scornful) **
(Inexplicable* murder at the seaside; simple, well-done plot with good characterization of an arrogant judge)
[This is a variation on that very entertaining plot device of somebody caught up in a very baffling predicament that makes no sense -- like waking up after being drunk and not knowing what happened]
* The motive is appalling. Immorally, Dr Fell nevertheless covers up for the murderer and leaves a falsely accused person dangling in the wind in spite of implied guarantees.
15. TILL DEATH DO US PART (1944) **
(Good locked-room mystery; village fête, 'grapevine', etc.; JDC's best English Village setting*)
[This is a classic Carr that should go on your shelves with the best of the 'village' Christies; it is also very accessible to readers who are not used to excessively complex impossible crimes]
* Many JDC books are set in the country, but this is one of the best at evoking a real atmosphere for that sort of place that doesn't involve anything supernatural or sinister (well, not much anyway). The locked-room gimmick is also very convincing.
16. HE WHO WHISPERS (1946) ***
(Impossible murders, then (France) and now (England); perfect)
[This one has all the best elements of a Carr mystery without
any major flaws]
17. THE SLEEPING SPHINX (1947) *
(Post-War; good creepy moments*, but too many unnecessary interruptions and coincidences)
[It becomes very irritating in later Carr books when the phone rings just as somebody is saying
'the poison was -- ' especially when the reader's having to wait for the answer has no relevance to the movement or explication of the plot]
* The only baffling locked-room element really has nothing to do with the story at all, as though the author came up with a gimmick and didn't know how else to use it -- waste not, want not.
18. BELOW SUSPICION (1949) **
(Not a great mystery as such, but very nice and convincing witchcraft element; JDC expresses his disillusionment with Socialism*)
[Patrick Butler appears as a participant; he got his own book later, but he is an insufferable character]
* A note on JDC's political/social philosophy: He was basically what we would call now a Libertarian, which is a combination of laissez faire and old-time conservatism. Regimentation of the people by government regulation, enforcement of rigid social respectablity codes, heavy taxation, hypocrisy -- these are bad. On the other hand, the ideal woman is a 'ginch', basically a bedworthy hand-maiden type with bobbed hair and a saucy tongue who should never work for a living but depend entirely on her man's Three-Musketeer ability to deal with every situation in a macho way, the more idiotic the better.
19. THE DEAD MAN'S KNOCK (1958)
(Set in the country; mediocre)
[Reference to a good Wilkie Collins book Armadale, which
is well worth reading, if you can find it]
20. IN SPITE OF THUNDER (1960) **
(Good setting in Geneva*; nice Grand Guignol night-club scenes; comedy of manners with everybody distrusting everybody else, but too much for coherence of various motivations in the plot)
[Also has a nice flashback scene to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's Eagles Nest, just before the War, and the character of the woman victim is excellently drawn]
* This was one of my first JDC books read, so maybe I rate it higher than it should be -- first impressions linger in spite of post-analysis. This book really grips.
21. THE HOUSE AT SATAN'S ELBOW (1965)
(Country-house murder; stylistic failure* and a falling off of originality)
[This is arguably JDC's worst book (but he had had a stroke, from which he later recovered, which would explain it) -- interminable, irrelevant, and incredibly stilted and unrealistic dialogue. Fans will groan with embarrassment for the author. Also, there is no actual murder (violation of a prime rule). l Skip this one!]
* On the first page, somebody gets a phone call and says: "About four years ago, in the summer of sixty, I hadn't heard your voice or set eyes on you for just under twenty-one years, when both of us were boys of not quite sixteen...." This is absolutely no literary way to establish a background for the characters and time setting. What was the matter with Carr, unless he had been corrupted by writing radio plays? Instead of a floor plan, which was always a good thing, he has people say 'over here on the left just beyond that wooden door, as you will observe, is the back hall with its three rooms, one of which is the butler's pantry....' The habit became so pervasive in the later books that it irritates to the detriment of the reader's enjoyment, no matter how good the plot.
22. PANIC IN BOX C (1966) *
(Westchester County NY*; some great scenes; otherwise too talky)
[Evocative scene on board a ship, murder during a performance of Romeo & Juliet, climax in an amusement park -- Carr at his best; the irrelevant padded-out verbal digressions, adolescent sexual bickering of middle-aged adults, the stage-direction and explication via dialogue/lecture -- Carr at his worst]
* Nice scene-setting in New York just before the 1964 World's Fair. It was fresh to JDC after long absences in England and is described in the way of one returning to a high-school reunion (baseball stats, commuter trains, etc.); now is almost an historical document. Although it's a flaw in the novel, the extraneous matter is very entertaining, including digressions about Stonewall Jackson and why the Confederate flag has 13 stars even though only 11 states seceded. However, one can do without that whole chapter in a bar where people are singing college songs, boola boola, puh-leeze, John, grow up!
23. DARK OF THE MOON (1967)
(Set in Charleston SC; poorly written, but an interesting change)
[The last Gideon Fell novel, although he hasn't aged that much since the first, considering he was supposedly born in 1884 and is a prime candidate for early heart failure as a fat smoker, drinker, trencherman who never exercises]
--. FELL AND FOUL PLAY
(A later compilation by D. Greene of the short stories; there are
more Dr. Fell shorts than there are of others; good collection)
II. Henri Bencolin Series (Paris Police Prefect)
(A Mephistophelean, Fouché-type character. Grand Guignol set-ups
for the most part, with 'impossible' situations, not as good as
in Carr's later works, but very atmospheric. The American Jeff
Marle is HB's chronicler in most of the series. Developed as the
detective of Carr's youth, when he was a college student.)
1. IT WALKS BY NIGHT (1930) **
(Set in Paris; Grand Guignol -- very well done, with some dated
reefer madness and very purple prose)
2. THE LOST GALLOWS (1931) *
(Set in London; Grand Guignol -- good job; the 'driverless car'
scene is surreal; wonderfully atmospheric book, but basically juvenilia with a lot of superficial antiquarian nonsense, especially Egyptological)
[Early devlopment of a persistent Carrian theme of inserting M.R. James-style antiquarianism to build up atmosphere; this works much better when the author can back it up with a spurious but convincing document from the past, which is not done here]
3. CASTLE SKULL (1931)
(Set in a splendid castle on the Rhine; should have been much better)
4. THE CORPSE IN THE WAXWORKS (1932) (The Waxworks Murder) ***
(Set in Paris; Grand Guignol and well evoked; the best of the Bencolins with great 1920s-30s Parisian atmosphere as one would like to imagine it)
[One can almost regard this as an 'historical' novel set in some never-never-land like Ruritania]
5. THE FOUR FALSE WEAPONS (1937)
(Set after HB's retirement -- disappointing, not the HB we knew, no longer Mephistophelean, now just a seedy scarecrow)
--. THE DOOR TO DOOM (1980)
(See below -- contains several Bencolin short stories written when
he was at Haverford College, immature, but fun)
III. Other Novels; Anthologies; Miscellaneous
1. POISON IN JEST (1932) *
(Set in Pennsylvania; spooky house -- American Gothic)
[Detective: Patrick Rossiter, Amateur Detective, friend of Bencolin]
2. THE BURNING COURT (1937) ***
(Set in Pennsylvania; a real supernatural classic)
[Detective: Gaudan Cross, Supernaturalist]
[The French made a movie of this, Le Chambre Ardente,
but I've never seen it on screen or mentioned in video catalogs; but supposedly they totally screwed up the setting and plot]
3. THE EMPEROR'S SNUFF BOX (1942) *
(Set in Paris; a master thief; least likely suspect is guilty)
[Detective: Dermot Kinross, Amateur Detective]
[Carr could have made him a series character -- he must have
been searching for new ones then, Col. March for example,
but there just wasn't enough there so he put him away with
the 'zizipompom' line.]
4. THE 9 WRONG ANSWERS (1952)
(Gimmick is contained in footnotes; experiment doesn't really work)
5. THE EXPLOITS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (1952)
[Co-author Adrian Conan Doyle]
[Sherlock Holmes pastiches; OK, but not the real thing -- i.e.,
you get the unwritten tales mentioned by Doyle about the Giant Rat of
Sumatra and the guy who disappeared on the way to the mail box]
6. THE THIRD BULLET AND OTHER STORIES (1954) (short stories)
(See below; some JDC and some CD; confusing edition history)
§7. PATRICK BUTLER FOR THE DEFENSE (1956)
(From prior reading, I recall a mysterious Egyptian and a very silly clue about gloves)
[Detective: Patrick Butler, Barrister]
This is one of the few JDC books I don't have
8. FATAL DESCENT (Fall to His Death) (1939)
[Co-author John Rhode]
(Good 'mechanical device' crime set in a 'mulitimedia' publishing company)
[Detective: Dr. Horatio Glass, Doctor]
[One of Carr's few collaborations, not counting some multi-author round-robins he did with the Detection Club]
§9. DR. FELL, DETECTIVE, AND OTHER STORIES (1947)
(Know nothing about this book, but presume it contains stories
that have been collected elsewhere)
10. THE MEN WHO EXPLAINED MIRACLES (1964)
(Short stories)
[Carr wrote very few short stories, at least compared to his
output of novels, but the ones he wrote were anthologized
all over the place -- this one has Col. March, HM, etc.]
11. THE DOOR TO DOOM AND OTHER DETECTIONS (1980) (Short stories) **
(Early stories, including several Bencolins; good)
[Note: This is where I got my chronology for the books; my thanks
to Douglas Greene]
12. THE DEPARTMENT OF QUEER COMPLAINTS (collected 1981)
(Colonel March of the Yard & other stories; nice collection of shorts)
[Colonel March is described as having a bland and speckled face -- more like one of Carr's police officials than his 'amateur' detectives -- one would prefer a Fell or Merrivale, but perhaps it is better in the short-story form not to distract with an eccentric detective. The idea of Scotland Yard having a bureau* dealing with odd unsolvable crimes is good (Roy Vickers, for example, had his Department of Dead Ends), but of course no police department can afford a luxury like that]
* Just as an aside, the NYC Police Department had an inspector who specialized in art thefts and had a world-wide reputation, ran a special squad. Sadly, his son followed him into the police department but ended up in different circumstances, in the 1990s convicted of unspeakable brutality in the notorious Abner Louima case.
13. THE DEAD SLEEP LIGHTLY (1983) (Radio plays; exotic nowadays) **
(He wrote a lot of radio plays; some have Dr. Fell in them)
[It would be nice to listen to some of these, but I haven't found any
on audio like the old Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes's.]
§14. SPEAK OF THE DEVIL (1994)
(A long 8-episode historical mystery radio play originally broadcast by the BBC in 1941; printed for the first time by Crippen & Landru publishers)
Plea: Doug Greene -- please reissue this book!
and...
15. THE LIFE OF SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (1949) *
(The 'official' biography, with support from Lady Doyle and Adrian Conan Doyle)
[His only non-fiction book (unless you count The Murder of Sir
Edmund Godfrey), although he wrote some articles, such as the
'Grandest Game in the World' (EQ magazine) and was book reviewer
for that same publication towards the end of his life.]
IV. Historical Novels & Miscellaneous
(The historical novels set before Victorian times tend to be
swashbucklers with lots of swordplay and sometimes a supernatural
element; the later ones often have police detectives based on
real people, such as Whicher of the Yard. One very nice feature of Carr's
historicals is the postscript section entitled Notes for the Curious that gives some
fascinating details about sources. First date in these
entries below is the time setting.)
1. THE BRIDE OF NEWGATE (1815; 1950) *
(A Regency set in London; fun)
2. THE DEVIL IN VELVET (1675; 1951) ***
(The best of these; real swashbuckler; 'time-traveling' hero)
3. CAPTAIN CUT-THROAT (1805; 1955) **
(Set in France; Napoleonic spies à la Scarlet Pimpernel)
4. FIRE, BURN! (1829; 1957) **
(A Regency set in London; good atmosphere; 'time-traveling' hero)
5. SCANDAL AT HIGH CHIMNEYS (1865; 1959) *
(Victorian country-house murder; good period piece -- and we know
they were into sex then, as long as it didn't frighten the horses)
6. THE WITCH OF THE LOW TIDE (1907; 1961)
(Edwardian; 'no footprints on a beach' situation; has that irritating
'stage direction' dialogue style mentioned above at its worst; pity)
7. THE DEMONIACS (1757; 1962)
(Hellfire Club; bit of a bore, well maybe not -- try it)
8. MOST SECRET (1670; 1964) **
(Nice intrigue in the Court of Charles II)
[revision of Devil Kinsmere, 1934, by Roger Fairbairn]
9. PAPA LA-BAS (1858; 1968)
(Victorian New Orleans; not my cup of tea; voodoo nowhere
near the level of Anne Rice's)
10. THE GHOST'S HIGH NOON (1912; 1969)
(New Orleans again; Carr's worst 'we are now standing here' manner)
11. DEADLY HALL (1927; 1971)
(English country house transported to New Orleans; not too bad)
12. THE HUNGRY GOBLIN (1869; 1972)
(His last book -- awful; it does, however, star Wilkie Collins as the detective)
and...
13. THE MURDER OF SIR EDMUND GODFREY (1678; 1936) ***
(Historical Reconstruction; well researched -- good job, a masterpiece of 'true crime'!)
CARTER DICKSON: Sir Henry Merrivale (Foreign Office)
(Merrivale, 'H.M.' or Maestro, is a baronet descended from the
Cavaliers; he is both a doctor and a lawyer, as well as head of
Military Intelligence in the earlier books. His 'Watson' is Chief
Inspector Masters, with whom he's always quarreling. H.M. is bald
and stout, Churchillian, smokes vile cigars, wears awful hats, and
bears a malignant expression. Most of the books contain a lot of
farcical material, sometimes very funny, often just ridiculous.
Some of his sidekicks, e.g., Ken Blake, appear in more than one
book. Catch-phrase is often "the blinkin' cussedness of things in
general"; H.M. also hates canoodling. Early on, he was described
as a rabid Socialist; later, he was definitely not! Seems never
to have shown any signs of aging.)
1. THE PLAGUE COURT MURDERS (1934)
(A really scary place in London, but the gimmick is not convincing;
identity of the murderer is a real surprise. Cf. The Lost Gallows.)
[Identities of HM and Masters not fully defined yet]
2. THE WHITE PRIORY MURDERS (1934)
(Country-house murder; footprints in the snow; Wodehousian country
weekend, with everybody running around at all hours of the night;
pretty incoherent, but good dialogue)
3. THE RED WIDOW MURDERS (1935) *
(HM in a serious vein; great bit about the French Revolution; one
of the best, though the murderer is a bit of an ass)
4. THE UNICORN MURDERS (1935)
(Set in French chateau; a supercrook à la Arsene Lupin; Ken Blake;
one of those plots that hinge on accidents and coincidences)
5. THE PUNCH AND JUDY MURDERS (1936) (The Magic Lantern Murders) *
(Set in Torquay; would make a good John Cleese movie; Ken Blake)
6. THE PEACOCK FEATHER MURDERS (1937) (The Ten Teacups)
(Secret society in London; locked-room murder -- lots of luck to make this
work; Ben Soar is a great character; but on the whole, not very good)
7. THE JUDAS WINDOW (1938) (The Crossbow Murders) *
(A courtroom drama at the Old Bailey; H.M. as a lawyer; Ken Blake;
superb and you'll never guess what a Judas Window is!)
[This should have been made into a movie with Charles Laughton,
like "Witness for the Prosecution"]
8. DEATH IN FIVE BOXES (1938) *
(London; 'how were the drinks poisoned?'; Dr. Sanders; good one)
9. THE READER IS WARNED (1939)
(Has a footnote gimmick; remote-control murder; cause of death not
convincing; Dr. Sanders)
10. AND SO TO MURDER (1940) *
(Set in a film studio; WW2; very funny in parts; no murder)
11. NINE--AND DEATH MAKES TEN (1940) (Murder in the Submarine Zone)
(Set on board an ocean liner; WW2; don't buy the fingerprint faking --
Carr was not strong on forensics)
12. SEEING IS BELIEVING (1941) (Cross of Murder)
(Country-house murder; hypnotism; gimmick is silly but it would work)
13. THE GILDED MAN (1942)
(Country-house burglar; based on a Dr. Fell or Col. March short story, "The Incautious
Burglar" [?]; well-written)
14. SHE DIED A LADY (1943) *
(1st-person narrative; sort of a romance novel; WW2; well done; you
can really get into the characters and care what happens to them more
than in most of Carr)
15. HE WOULDN'T KILL PATIENCE (1944)
(Takes place in a snake house in a London zoo; WW2 Blitz;
atmospheric, but the actual murderous event -- what people heard -- is
absurd; ending is hair-raising if you don't like snakes)
16. THE CURSE OF THE BRONZE LAMP (1945) *
(Great take-off on Egyptian curses; one of the best Merrivales)
17. MY LATE WIVES (1946) *
(Serial killer moved to a village; excellent climax; one of the
nastiest murderers in the series)
18. THE SKELETON IN THE CLOCK (1948)
(Country-house murder way in the past; improbable solution; do you
remember the TV series "Banacek" with all its flashbacks?)
19. A GRAVEYARD TO LET (1949) *
(Set in New York and New Jersey; HM very funny -- and very spry for
a geriatric, if we accept bio data from the earliest books)
20. NIGHT AT THE MOCKING WIDOW (1950)
(Poison-pen letters in a village; disappointing; an English "cosy")
21. BEHIND THE CRIMSON BLIND (1952)
(Set in Tangier; a Raffles-type crook; fantasm, not that good)
22. THE CAVALIER'S CUP (1953)
(Country-house burglary; simple but clean gimmick; no murder)
--. MERRIVALE, MARCH, AND MURDER
(D. Greene anthology of the HM short stories, Col. March (complete), etc. -- this has the last HM
story that Carr did: "All in a Maze" [aka "Ministry of Miracles"])
Other
1. THE BOWSTRING MURDERS (1933)
[By 'Carr' Dickson]
(Locked-room murder in a castle; apparently recycled juvenilia)
[Detective: John Gaunt, sottish forensic scientist]
2. THE THIRD BULLET (1937) (short stories)
[Detective: Col. Marquis, Scotland Yard]
(Title story is an aborted novel, which would have worked better
if fleshed out)
3. THE DEPARTMENT OF QUEER COMPLAINTS (1940) (short stories)
(Some classic short stories; Boris Karloff played Col. March on TV)
[Detective: Col. March, Scotland Yard]
Note: This is listed twice because I have editions both by JDC and CD.
§4. FEAR IS THE SAME (1956)
(Historical: 1795 -- Greene calls this Carr's best historical novel)
Plea: Is this book available anywhere? I don't have it (though I do remember reading it).
NB: § I don't have these books currently. Star ratings (my preferences) none to three *
|
Click skull for a short write-up
on locked-room and other impossible-crime subjects.
