Link to Annotated Dr Gideon Fell List

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, Bencolin's character was never defined well -- either a devil in evening dress or a kindly buffer in tweeds. One prefers the sinister manifestations because they are more fun to read.)

"I think that I had become a bit sneering in regard to Bencolin as more than a bit of the charlatan; he intimated that he knew so much, yet in demonstration he appeared to know nothing at all." -- Jeff Marle

Link to Annotated Bencolin List and Other Carr Books

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.)

Link to Annotated Historical Novels List

CARTER DICKSON: Sir Henry Merrivale (Foreign Office)

(Merrivale, 'HM' 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. HM 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"; HM 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) §§
2.	THE WHITE PRIORY MURDERS (1934) §
3.	THE RED WIDOW MURDERS (1935) §
4.	THE UNICORN MURDERS (1935)
5.	THE PUNCH AND JUDY MURDERS (1936) (The Magic Lantern Murders) §
6.	THE PEACOCK FEATHER MURDERS (1937) (The Ten Teacups)
7.	THE JUDAS WINDOW (1938) (The Crossbow Murder) §§§
8.	DEATH IN FIVE BOXES (1938) §
9.	THE READER IS WARNED (1939) §
10.	AND SO TO MURDER (1940)
11.	NINE--AND DEATH MAKES TEN (1940) (Murder in the Submarine Zone) §
12.	SEEING IS BELIEVING (1941) (Cross of Murder)
13.	THE GILDED MAN (1942)
14.	SHE DIED A LADY (1943) §§
15.	HE WOULDN'T KILL PATIENCE (1944)
16.	THE CURSE OF THE BRONZE LAMP (1945) §§§
17.	MY LATE WIVES (1946) §
18.	THE SKELETON IN THE CLOCK (1948)
19.	A GRAVEYARD TO LET (1949) §
20.	NIGHT AT THE MOCKING WIDOW (1950)
21.	BEHIND THE CRIMSON BLIND (1952)
22.	THE CAVALIER'S CUP (1953)
---.	MERRIVALE, MARCH, AND MURDER (1991)§§ (Anthology compiled by Douglas Greene)

Other

1.	THE BOWSTRING MURDERS (1933)
2.	THE THIRD BULLET (1937) (short stories)
3.	THE DEPARTMENT OF QUEER COMPLAINTS (1940) (short stories) § Note: This is listed twice because I have editions both by JDC and CD.
4.	FEAR IS THE SAME (1956) (historical: 1795)

Link to Annotated Sir Henry Merrivale List and Other Dickson Books

• Availability.
  Relatively few Carr/Dickson books are in print in recent editions (they tend to come and go in blocks of several books). Collier had a lot of Dr. Fells out for several years, but that imprint seems to have been swallowed up by some conglomerate. Bantam printed several, especially the 'historicals', but stopped. Berkley did a lot of Merrivales, but discontinued them several years ago. IPL has been most active in republishing his books, although they have stopped doing more; Carroll & Graf likewise. Zebra did a bunch with nice covers -- whatever happened to that publisher? Penguin still has a couple in print, especially The Three Coffins (The Hollow Man in its British form). Carr's main hardcover publisher was Harper, and Morrow did the Carter Dicksons -- they still turn up at garage sales and the like, so grab one (any) when you see it. A handful of his books have just never been reprinted for some reason or another (although I've read all) -- and I have been collecting his books since 1959, when I read my first one (Fire Burn). I had an opportunity to swipe Most Secret from the library when in college, but felt too guilty about doing such a thing (what's worse, I could have gotten Queen's suppressed The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes -- one would kill for that book now). -- ['Grobius Shortling' 1996]

• Provenance.
  Dates and titles are generally taken from Douglas Greene's biographical notes, but sometimes from my own editions. Accuracy when considering US/UK chronology and titling not guaranteed, since bibliography is an exacting discipline.

• [June 2001] Presentation of Clues.
  A John Dickson Carr mystery has no pretensions to being a realistic crime story; it is admittedly pure fantasy and entertainment operating under its own rules, with special attention to the Golden Age Decalogue. Whether the author plays totally fair with the reader in presenting all of the clues can often be debated, although in hindsight or rereading one can say they are all there -- you are even given page references in footnotes on occasion. Question is, was the presentation fair in some cases? Carr has a habit of stating, or having someone state, something, then contradicting it later, saying it was an 'admitted' or 'perceived' fact (by whom, one must ask), or that while it was mentioned so-and-so was telling the 'strict' truth, there is always a second side to every coin (watching a closed door all night does not take into account bathroom breaks, or the detective's telling the murderer, and us, he is not a suspect is just a diplomatic ploy). If Carr uses a phrase like 'it was said with sincerity and obvious truth' you know damn well he is begging an issue! The cautious reader should note every word, especially when something is expressed very precisely with an adjective or adverbial qualification that is unnecessary to convey the simple meaning. Beware of falling into the kind of trap where Dr Fell says 'no woman could have fired that pistol' and it turns out the murderer is a woman who fired a rifle (you are meant to assume the killer is a man). One of the Golden Age rules is that all clues be revealed to the reader; a corollary is that all clues be revealed to the detective. Since a lot of JDC's cluing is revealed in dialogue phraseology, he often has his detective eavesdrop on scenes he is not present in, or else listen to testimony in which all details, including phrases and actions, are given verbatim (something only Nero Wolfe's Archie Goodwin can do perfectly). That is fair presentation, but it often taxes one's credulity.

• [July 2001] Carr's Women.
  Undertaking a rereading of the Carr books this summer, and since my wife dislikes his treatment of women, I will make some comments. The ideal JDC heroine is what we would now call a bimbo, he called them ginches. She has bobbed blonde/brown hair, a trim figure of a fairly small size (but with nice tits, if you will excuse the term), a short nose and a wide mouth, nice white complexion, and a ridiculous attitude about men -- not shy about sex, but totally irrational in the sense of blurting out stuff that shouldn't be blurted out, getting superficially jealous about her man over trivia, bursting into tears, and preferring total dependence as opposed to having any career at all. Not necessarily a stupid girl, but the hero always wants to sock her in the jaw, usually for good reasons, especially for imperceptiveness, irrationality, and foolish behavior. On the other hand, JDC's older women, often suspects or victims, are frequently very well characterized. Not to open up the subject of the author's own preferences for ginches, one could just say that his idealized bedmate had nothing to do with his writing intelligence.

  There are some really wonderful women in his books, but hardly ever the heroine. The subsidiary misunderstandings between the hero and heroine are normally just there to add so-called human interest to the plot, but have little to do with it in the long run (even when the girl is suspected). And what about JDC's heroes? (By hero, I mean the central point-of-view character, not the detectives.) Well, he happens to be kind of dumb and imperceptive, more willing to use his fists than his brains, totally ignorant of which woman truly is in love with him until she just happens to fall into his arms; he is basically a Cavalier or Musketeer, as the author conceives of that sort of person -- hates Jane Austen and loves Dumas, hates pompous people and loves drunken idiots. His motivation for NOT declaring his love, when a rich heiress is involved, is that he wants to have nothing to do with her money but support them both on his meager earnings as a freelance writer or whatever.

  Well, OK, I agree in principle if not in common sense, but only when reading the books. Carr provides no sensible prescriptions for life as it is, and that shouldn't be expected anyway -- his books are fantasies on top of interesting but improbable mystery events. This is escapist literature as well as being an intellectual challenge. For sheer puzzles and complexity, he probably wrote the best mystery novels ever, even including Agatha Christie as a rival for ingenious plots, and he is a lot more fun to read than Agatha.

• [August 2001] Carr and Forensic Evidence.
  He basically wrote intuitive detective stories. Do not depend on him for accuracy about physical clues regarding footprints, tobacco ashes, characteristics of poisons, or ballistics. When he used those elements, he got them out of criminological or other books or from friends who knew the details when he needed something accurately described. There are some major and laughable blunders in the mysteries when this policy was not followed, not that it necessarily detracts from the story. His first book had the nonsense about hashish being a fatal drug, a much later one would leave you to believe that carbon dioxide ('carbonic acid gas' aka 'dry ice') is a deadly poison that will drive one to leaping in abject terror out of windows. There are many dumb things like this if you read the books as documents rather than fantasies obeying their own, weird, rules. As far as fingerprint evidence and basic things like that go, he has his detectives picking up guns and so on and saying 'bah, no possibility of prints on this, no murderer would ever not wear gloves' -- which of course is bull, because most criminals, except burglars, in fact do leave fingerprints, it's just that they don't care usually! Fingerprints and things like that are rarely used to convict in a trial, but they are damned useful in pointing out the culprit's identity to the investigators who can then look for culpatory evidence. (Once a cop knows your identify, you are screwed whatever locked-room gimmick you used. Still, you may not actually be charged or convicted, as we see all the time. Famous Scottish legal verdict, Not Proven, meaning 'We know you did it, just don't dare do it again'.). Some of the early Carr's, especially the Bencolin ones, had a lot of forensic evidence -- microphotography of pore prints and things like that, popular at the time but just as ineffective in court as OJ's DNA samples -- but he really didn't care about this and usually suppressed it except as corroboration for the summing up.

  But when a Carr plot depended on a scrupulous timetable or anything detailed like that, he went all out for it, and he supposedly pre-tested all his locked-room tricks in some way or another -- with models, drinking with friends, whatever. One of his favorite tricks is to play with time factors: XXX events only took one minute (people always overestimate time elapsations) or YYY events actually took four hours (people always underestimate time elapsations) -- you can have it both ways in a Carr story. If I, for example, ever tried to pretend to leave the room for a snort of gin, run out of the house, prop up a ladder, do some manipulation with an awkward mechanical device through the window, put everything back in place, and be back in the room, all in 13 seconds, while a witness has me in at least partial sight as my alibi -- well, forget it! It should be pointed out that he read all the out-dated criminological bibles of the period (Gross, etc.) and cited them when he thought it was needed. That stuff, even if it happened, was never in the same context. But does he play fair with forensic evidence? Yes, for the most part, when he bothers to use it. It normally works better when he doesn't.

• [September 2001] Historical Background Documents.
  In his earlier efforts, Carr just stated that something was weird and haunting and threw in some descriptive stuff about fog, rain, or snow. He soon learned the M. R. James trick of providing documentation, in the form of old diaries, letters, etc. written in the style of the whatever period the reputation of the place dates from -- and became really expert at this. As early as Hag's Nook and Plague Court he started backing up his assertions this way, to the vast improvement of his books, and his ear for archaic dialogue was actually much better than in his attempts at contemporary slang of the 1930s-1950s (in fact that got worse as he proceeded into the 1960s-1970s -- Carr, like my grandmother, probably didn't know who the Beatles were except that they had stupid haircuts). He had no taste for jazz music, modern art or literature, scientific and psychiatric jargon, or left-wing politics or feminism. OK, he had blind prejudices, but so do we all... What he did extremely well was to present his preferences and hobby-horses in a way that both entertains and instructs the reader, and that is very Aristotelean and admirable. Bad as some of his historical novels are in plot and dialogue, his Notes for the Curious are fascinating -- and one can only admire an author who describes Bloody Mary as a baby-faced blonde and Mary Queen of Scots as an ugly hag. One of his best 'throwaways' of this sort occurs in Red Widow Murders with a wonderful interpolated narrative about an ancestor marrying into the hereditary executioner family of France -- might be BS to some extent and doesn't contribute much to the plot, but wow!

• [October 2001] Carr's World War Two Books
  There is something almost quaint (beyond the 'historical quaintness' of Golden Age books set pre-war) about the incidental elements thrown into the books that are actually set during the war or just before or after. There are of course all the incidental jokey references made to Hitler and Mussolini in the 1930s books and all the contempt for socialistic welfare governments shown in the later ones. When a JDC mystery actually takes place during the war, there are more than references -- actual plot elements -- based on things that just look plain stupid from a modern perspective. That dates the books but also adds considerable interest. Blackout regulations, and requiring civilians to carry gas masks, were totally useless measures originally based on the prior war, but they were strictly enforced. One would commit a mugging to get a fresh egg because of food rationing -- in fact that is when they invented powdered egg or whatever just-add-water, spam, oleomargerine and all that stuff that is now the basis of all the fast convenience and 'dietary' food we now depend on (just keep in mind that the flavoring junk they now put in these foods to make them palatable wasn't invented until years later). On the other hand, they really didn't have the 'where-are-your-papers' Gestapo mentality in England yet; now under modern anti-terrorism regulations you can't even take a simple airplane flight in the US without showing some sort of photo ID. Mutatis mutandis or Plus ça change, la même choses (or however that is written). This adds some immediacy-by-distancing elements to Carr's books of this period. You couldn't even wander around a country house with a candle then without some busybody blackout warden shouting about illegal lights (although of course the Germans bombed under bright moonlight and wouldn't have gone after remote country cottages showing a light in any case). Also, Carr conveys the we-are-all-in-this-together viewpoint very well; people did cooperate with the nonsense in the early 1940s, even the ex-pacifists and right-wingers. It was in New York, for example, in September 2001, where people briefly achieved that sort of national and community unification, and in similar incidents in the rest of the country over the last few years, that that mentality briefly (sadly, very briefly and not sustainedly) resurfaced. It would never last four years now, as it really did back then.

  [On the other hand, the war only had to be ended a few weeks for the loyal British people to kick out Churchill and proceed to ruin their country for the next 25 years. Was that because of the Commies? Only partly, the rest was just stupidity and a desire for a better life for the have-nots at the expense of the haves. It drove so-called rich people like Carr who didn't belong to a trade union or work with their hands out of the country, in any case. It was the despised Yuppies and Thatcherites, who would never have been invited into a Golden Age drawing room, who turned that around, however, a generation or two after Carr's prime. Only multimillionaires with a sense of 'class' now have Golden Age drawing rooms, butlers, and full-time housemaids (not part-time cleaners). Point is, the world has changed. Better? Worse? It's all balancing, really -- good things go away and so do bad things, to be replaced by bad things and good things!]

Click skull for a short write-up on locked-room and other impossible-crime subjects.

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Miscellaneous

From Initial Page: Carr's literary agents tended to jumble up his short stories, with miscellaneous collections mixing Dr Fell, HM, Col. March (who, by the way, was played by Boris Karloff in a short TV series), and randoms. As usual with this sort of thing, you end up with one important book that contains a story that none of the others has. Anyway, does anybody know where I can get the books I'm missing? Also, has Douglas G. Greene's biography ever been published? John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995) is the definitive biography and critical analysis.

January 2, 1997: Never mind, I found it, cost 35 bucks, but treated myself to a Xmas present. Looks like my judgments and statements of fact are fairly close, but I did make some mistakes. For example, I made the attribution that Patrick Butler was borrowed from Christie, whereas it was Chesterton. I have made silent corrections to this web page, but usually based on Greene (though I don't always agree with the critical opinions). You should read this biography! Beautifully done. Still, you need to be a diehard JDC fan since there is a lot of information -- about his school/college days, his royalty payments (though it is laughable now that such a popular author was only guaranteed a residual of about $150 a month by Harpers), etc. -- that won't be of general interest. The sections on radio dramas are very interesting in their own right. Many have been anthologized, but it would be nice to see an omnibus edition.

April 15, 1998: Have just finished the ordeal of doing my taxes and decided to celebrate by revisiting my old web pages (that's masochism for you). This one is almost 4 years old, and it's startling how clunky it looked, with typewriter font text and a gray background. Hence a quick cosmetic change, which should make it easier to read and less hard on the eyes.

April 12, 1999: Another tax time, just as much of a hassle -- but made some minor cosmetic changes before the millennium. Got rid of the irritating horizontal scroll bar. (All I wish is that I could include some new JDC books, but alas... Carr would have been 93 this year.) Some of the other JDC sites (see below) have now outstripped mine, which really was the most comprehensive a few years ago -- more power to them!

July, 2001: (Forget taxes, we are always screwed.) Undertaking yet another rereading of the works. One minor point that became immediately noticeable: spelling and syntax. 'Wabbling' vs. 'Wobbling'. 'Lighted a cigarette' vs. 'Lit a cigarette'. Etc. This might be a copy-editing problem (I did that for a while for a living a long time ago) and related to US and English editions of the books. Another point is the obvious obfuscation (O-O), where an important revelation is interrupted at the climax with a dash before you get to hear it out; a plot device, but very irritating. And there is the fact that the most complicated JDC plots depend on extraordinary coincidences of people being involved on the scene when they shouldn't have been, didn't even need to be, for the sheer devised convenience of plot manipulation. What remains, and is even more important than the mechanics, are wonderful set pieces of description, prescriptive judgments as to literature and attitude preferences (Treasure Island vs. Adam Bede), really good M. R. James-type evocations of a spine-shivering image.... Even the worst-plotted Carr mystery has at least one such moment.

August, 2001: In the midst of a re-reading of the works of John Dickson Carr, I have been adding a lot of new commentary. This is making the web page unwieldy -- over 65,000 bytes -- so the book descriptions are being moved to separate web pages (in four sections), and the list here converted to a simple bibliographical catalogue. Note that this site does not have much information about individual editions, as most of them are unavailable now anyway, unless one collects first editions.

November, 2001: Finished rereading all the novels and many of the short stories. Still think John Dickson Carr is the best; however, there are many flaws one can criticize. I am rather sad that this project is over, especially considering how really wonderful most of the 1930s books were, and many of the later ones. One considers that almost the entire public output of a person's life can be gone through in a couple of months -- is that a philosophical point or just a cliché? It will be years now until I reread another, if ever (with a couple of exceptions that can't be resisted on a gloomy late November night with nothing else of interest around). Which are recommended for permanent space on your reread shelf? Mad Hatter, Three Coffins, He Who Whispers, Waxworks Murder, Burning Court, Devil in Velvet, Fire Burn, Judas Window, Bronze Lamp, and The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey.

See also on this Mysterylist web site: Michael Innes, Edmund Crispin, S. S. Van Dine, and many others

---

Please join The John Dickson Carr Society on the Internet if you are interested.

Other JDC links:

Classic Mystery Page
The John Dickson Carr Collector
The Ministry of Miracles
Golden Age of Detection Group
Golden Age Mysteries Forum
Fans of JDC Group

Click here for a very funny parody of Mr Carr

Warning: Unless you have a DSL or LAN connection, some of these sites are glacially slow to access.

Forgive a little self-indulgence, but check out my Hag's Nook web page at Marshmount.Com
Also -- WARNING -- given that the web page gives away the story, here is an irreverant review of The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins)
Also see Deconstruction of a Carr Plot (To Wake the Dead)
January 2005: "Death and the Vanishing Goblin" (a Pastiche)

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