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WARNING: Some of these capsule reviews hint at the solution, so do not read the footnote to the review if you have not read the book

Annotated Book List

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. Compare with The Lost Gallows, by Carr, where the historical trappings were thrown in without documentation.)
[Identities of H.M. and Masters not fully defined yet, especially lacking H.M.'s slapstick escapades]
[Chief Inspector Masters is presented here as a Colonel March type character and an expert in dealing with false mediums; H.M. only enters late into one of Dickson's longest books. A really nice job of backing up the spookiness with pseudo-genuine 17th Century documentation à la M. R. James, done very effectively although how such a derelict and decayed and haunted place such as Playge Court survived in fine real-estate territory near the Old Bailey is somewhat problematical, even for 1930.]

* Very S.S. Van Dine in presentation, yet with the identity of the murderer being a real surprise. But you have to take the locked-room solution with a grain of salt.

2. THE WHITE PRIORY MURDERS (1934) §
(Country-house murder; lack of expected footprints in the snow; better than average Dickson*)
[Wodehousian country weekend, with everybody running around at all hours of the night; pretty incoherent, but good dialogue and interesting characters. H.M. in good form.]

* Explanation of the 'locked room' is very convincing, although requiring a lot of luck on the part of one of the villains (yes, nearly everybody was up to something even if not collaborating). The solution is so effective Carr used variations on it for several of his books. Probably one of the most realistic-to-life explanations of such a thing, even if it never happens -- but then who would have believed the OJ Simpson thing? Oddly enough, this methodology is not really covered fully in Dr Fell's famous Locked Room Lecture.

3. THE RED WIDOW MURDERS (1935) §
(H.M. in a serious vein; great bit about the French Revolution; opens beautifully but the ending is chaotic and pretty stupid, and the murderer is a bit of an ass*)
[One of the author's wonderful decayed London houses, long since demolished; there is a set-piece narrative told by one of the characters about his ancestor's marriage into the hereditary family of official executioners during the French Revolution that is really superb, although sadly the narrator of that tale becomes a murder victim.]

* The real motivation is ridiculous, once the more convincing scenarios are disposed of, including the supernatural. Gimmick might have worked, just not sure, and it's not clear whether the author really believed in it either -- poisoning by curare, arrow or blowdart poison, is a dubious business smacking of Fu Manchu. Pity, because this could have been one of the best H.M.'s (and like Plague Court it is one of the longest and most carefully planned until its chaotic ending).

-- A digression, which is buried in this obscure web page note, because one doesn't want to carp on one's favorite detective story novelist's failures: He was often a very sloppy writer, apart from cleverly planting 'clues', and was very touchy about letting publishers apply even minor copy editing revisions. The following from this book is shameful but typical -- "Masters, portly and sedate of dress ... his grizzled hair carefully brushed to hide the bald spot ... pushed his bowler hat to the back of his head and turned towards H.M.." This doesn't distract from the reading of the book but is very irritating on subsequent careful rereadings. How can one know Masters is hiding a bald spot if he is wearing a bowler hat? This sort of thing really bugs me, but mainly because I used to be a copy/content editor and I never had any patience with authors who resented even suggestions to revising something like this. The author also constantly confuses left and right! That's why floor plans are important for his books.

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)
[One of that sub-genre of mysteries involving a typically French master criminal, expert at disguise, duel with a Sûreté top cop, arrogant challenges to the newspapers and authorities, and totally unbelievable coincidences. Fun, but stupid.* This is a sincere imitation of Carr's favorite Leroux novel, The Mystery of the Yellow Room.]

* H.M. novels now switch emphasis from eerie atmosphere to farce, although there is always a touch of the former in any Dickson book. The triple impersonation here is ridiculous even for a 'master of disguise'. This book is exactly what you would expect from the description. But read it for amusement.

5. THE PUNCH AND JUDY MURDERS (1936) (The Magic Lantern Murders) §
(Set in Torquay; would make a good John Cleese movie*; Ken Blake)
[This is a 'spy' novel and a grand adventure, even funnier than The Blind Barber or The Arabian Nights Murder and without the drunkenness, a real roller-coaster ride; it all happens on the night before the hero's wedding, and will he ever get to the church on time?]

* H.M. finally puts on his trademark Panama hat, having given up his disreputable Victorian top hat, at least for the time being. A nice comedy of errors with a very resourceful and quick-thinking hero, who just gets deeper and deeper into the s---. A fast-moving non-thinker book, which is just as well given the absurd plot. The ending is sadly disappointing, unfortunately, and Carr lets his villain escape, as he often does, for no real reason except some misdirected sympathy -- he left more justifiably motivated murderers to go to the hangman in other books.

-- A moral point: I myself as a non-official would cover up for a murder if I sympathized with the killer, but JDC often picks the person one would least relate to as worthy of being saved, usually based on an 'old-boy-network' type mentality. The greatest swashbucklers in history often ended up in the execution dock, and deservedly, no matter how entertaining they were; there were plenty of poor patsies who died because nobody ever felt for them. But allowing the murderer a chance at suicide is always acceptable in a Golden Age mystery, one of the conventions of the genre, since death penalties are so arbitrary and undignified. In some ways it's much more satisfying to end a book with a gunfight or something of that sort.

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 fine character, as are several of the others; but on the whole, the mystery is not very good, depending as it does on an Olympic-style feat and the stupidity of the victim]

* This is a red herring, fairly typical of Carr/Dickson: secret societies, witch cults, supernatural events, malignant ghosts, etc. While usually shot down as really applicable to the solution, these touches add atmosphere and mystery, but not very much in this case, since no attempt is made to make it a serious part of the story.

-- PS: This is one of a series of Carter Dicksons issued by IPL publishers with some very fine Nicky Zann cover drawings. Zebra had some good ones depicting Fell, Gaunt, and Bencolin, but nothing near these evocative and amusing pictures that IPL did.

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!)
[One Dickson's best-constructed plots, dramatically and logically, the only major flaw being, if H.M. had all his proofs and witnesses before the trial, why did the case ever come to court? There are a couple of other nits one could pick, but they are not worth mentioning.]

* This should have been made into a movie with Charles Laughton, like "Witness for the Prosecution", which it resembles. This is a case where all the facts apparently point to the defendant's guilt, and only the brilliance of the defense barrister can save him.

8. DEATH IN FIVE BOXES (1938) §
(London; 'how were the drinks poisoned?'*; Dr. Sanders; some well-done characters and a really nasty secondary villain who comes to an apt end)
[This book starts, as many Carr/Dickson books do, with a confrontation on a dark street of the staid but secretly adventurous point-of-view character by a damsel in distress; nice, but he overworked that gambit in all its variations, even though it's a good way to open a book. Plunging directly into an inexplicable situation is very effective, with the gradual explication of various enigmas revealed in the course of the narrative, with new ones being introduced -- quite unlike the more traditional murder-scene, interviews-of-all-the-suspects, and revelation-by-detective formula of many mysteries that were contemporary.]

* Cocktails were not that well-known in England at that time apart from international-style night clubs; just remember the common American complaint about British pubs before world Americanization. Both the solution and murderer are weak elements in an otherwise very entertaining book with some well-drawn characters.

9. THE READER IS WARNED (1939) §
(Has a footnote gimmick; remote-control murder but the actual method not convincing as described; Dr. Sanders)
[Very atmospheric and effective setting, and a 'nice surprise' murderer; the mind-reader, Herman Pennik, who claims to be able to kill by long distance 'Teleforce'* is very well done. Unfortunately, the mystification following the simple murder itself is almost beyond absurdity. As a murder method (used twice), the means used to cover up are inadequate and improbable (cf. The Gilded Man).]

* This was written just before the Second World War; there is a section that is very ironic in hindsight, where H.M. debunks pseudo-science: "...Teleforce is turned into howlin' nonsense, and pseudo-scientific rubbish gets the kick in the pants it deserves. ...the next time alarmists ... tell you about a super-bomb that'll drop from an enemy airplane and wipe out a whole county ... you ... softly murmur, 'Teleforce' and be comforted."

10. AND SO TO MURDER (1940)
(Set in a film studio; WW2; very funny in parts; no murder; Ken Blake)
[Every now and then the author would set a novel in some background setting that he had experienced (beyond country houses and London), and this is a good example, another being the Tangier of Behind the Crimson Blind. In this case a movie studio, and obviously he found it less than ideal, hence the sarcastic but humorous attitude about what goes on in this sort of place. As a detective story, however, this pretty much sucks.*]

* First of all, there is no actual murder, and that violates a rule defining what a murder mystery is -- CD wrote a few books where no one was killed, which subtracts from their appeal no matter how good the plots and gimmicks are -- it is just cheating the readers' expectations. But the prime failure of this book is that the detective vouches for the honesty of the criminal, even knowing he was guilty. That is misleading the reader beyond the allowable limits of the genre.

11. NINE--AND DEATH MAKES TEN (1940) (Murder in the Submarine Zone) §
(Set on board an ocean liner; WW2; great setting and atmosphere)
[A wonderful variation on the people-trapped-in-a-stranded-house theme, this time an ocean liner with only nine passengers, but a load of armaments, travelling through German U-boat menace in mid-Winter North Atlantic; one of JDC's best milieux (cf. Blind Barber and Panic in Box C). The 'impossible' gimmick*, however, is unconvincing and unnecessary, only added because it is a Carter Dickson novel. This is a Roman à Clef and really takes advantage of the wartime situation. If you can accept the forensic faux-pas, then this is one of CD's best in gripping plots.]

* This involves fingerprint faking, which is never convincing (even with backup quotations from old-time criminology textbooks), although one can make allowances that they didn't have the forensic facilities of Scotland Yard or the NYPD available. But it is a really fun book to read.
The Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo wrote a short story called "The Twins" that uses the same fingerprint 'gimmick'; I am not sure of the date of this, but no doubt the coincidence is accidental.

-- Film-makers missed out on a lot by never using Carr books for movie plots; although he did plenty of radio plays, a lot of which used ocean liner settings.

12. SEEING IS BELIEVING (1941) (Cross of Murder)
(Murder in Cheltenham; hypnotism*; gimmick is silly but it could work)
[Timing is everything, and the murderer hence was very lucky not to get caught in the act doing this risible thing.]

* One encounters hypnotism fairly often in mysteries; there is usually stuff about the subjects being incapable of any act they wouldn't perform consciously, also that it is dangerous to break a trance. (Granted, that's why the hypnotist had given it up as a regular practice -- the author sees and mentions that big fallacious assumption.) Whether this is true or not (like similar nonsense about ventriloquism) is not something I can pass any judgments on, regardless of learned quotations from very dated books.

13. THE GILDED MAN (1942)
(Country-house burglar; based on a Dr. Fell or Col. March short story, "The Incautious Burglar" [?]; well-written)
[A man supposedly burgles his own house and ends up stabbed.* The house itself, the lavish creation of an Edwardian actress with a private theatre, is very well described, and H.M. providing a New Year's entertainment as the magician The Great Kafoozalum is very funny. The ending, however, is unusually sad and depressing for a CD.]

* The title refers to an El Greco painting about El Dorado, which represents a lake in Colombia into which the Incas used to throw tons of gold as a sacrifice to the gods; it is pretty much a red herring, unfortunately -- more could have been done with this. The solution, something CD used more than once, with variations, depends on an improbability that anybody who has ever had to handle a drunk (let alone a corpse) will disbelieve.

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)
[This is one of CD's best books, in spite of H.M.'s shenanigans involving a motorized wheelchair. It is particularly good with characterization, and also describing the early days of World War Two. There is also, for once, a fully justified cover-up by H.M. at the end. The 'puzzle' is pretty good too, if not up to classic standard.]

* For one thing he has some very convincing women characters, although CD is not noted for good characterization of that sex (they are either bitches or ginches); the women in this book are well-described, from Rita to Belle, especially the latter. Also the men are not as stereotyped as usual. There are glimmers beyond formula detection of actual real people -- maybe writing from a first-person journal viewpoint helped out the author's narrative technique, certainly makes it an unusual H.M. book and also explains some of the cover-up of clues better than normally. Point of view is very important sometimes in a mystery and it's too bad CD/JDC didn't follow this precept as often as he should have. Christie's Murder of Roger Ackroyd, unfair as it has been called, only works because of the narrative technique, and to my mind that is a legitimate way to bamboozle the reader. But this is one of Carr's few books where you really feel compassion for the characters. Well done, a masterpiece!

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)
[The villain in this is one of CD's nastiest and you would pick this one out right away if it didn't seem impossible for 'them' to have done it. The early war setting is interesting and atmospheric and there is good stuff about snakes, and the ending is very dramatic. Nice title is based on the name of a small green Bornese tree snake called Patience.]

* Well, really, how can one confuse the sound of a German bomber with a vacuum cleaner? Is that a giveaway? Well, tough, this is ridiculous.

-- This is one of CD's World War Two books, which have an immediacy that goes beyond the never-never-land of the country house stories. You really get the impression of what it was like being in the midst of an air raid, for example. Since I never experienced it first-hand, maybe German bombers did sound like vacuum cleaners!

16. THE CURSE OF THE BRONZE LAMP (1945) §§§
(Great take-off on Egyptian curses; excellent country house setting; one of the best Merrivales*)
[This was the period when some people still fell for the curse of King Tut's Tomb, Lord Carnarvon having died of a mosquito bite and various other incidents that happened to the 'desecrators' (well, people still believe silly things, like Nostradamus predictions). Book was written after WW2 but set prior to it, as the author was becoming nostalgic and cranky.]

* This is one of the author's best-plotted books in the sense it is a structured comedy of the 17th-18th Century sort -- nice mystery, some creepy threatening atmosphere, but everything works out in the end. This would work very well as a play or movie. (Sample chapter 15 for CD at his best, or most characteristic writing -- there are some chapters in JDC/CD's mysteries that are just mind-blowing tour-de-forces regardless of flaws in the rest of the book.)

-- In the later books, Carter Dickson always has H.M. indulging in a new 'hobby' (opera singing, writing his memoirs, etc.) or a situation (broken toe and a motorized wheelchair, a suitcase he invented with built-in wheels, etc.) to provide some simple-minded comedy. Here, apart from an incident when he glues a five-pound note to the face of a Cairo taxi driver, it is the mere compilation of a scrap book and comparing it with the butler's (Benson, a Jeeves incarnate, who later became H.M.'s own butler). In hindsight, some of the other Merrivale books could have been improved with this Benson character in tow as a fixture in addition to C.I. Masters if CD had invented him earlier -- a perfect Wooster/Jeeves couple.

17. MY LATE WIVES (1946) §
(Serial killer moved to a village; excellent climax*; one of the nastiest murderers in the series)
[A serial wife-killer, never caught, who has 'retired' writes a play about himself -- well, he has several screws loose -- and sends it to a famous actor, the (unbeknownst to him) brother of one of his victims. The actor goes to the village posing as the murderer and events then follow, by golly. Melodrama and implausibilities abound, but this is a fun read.]

* The setting is just after the War and ends up in an abandoned 'battle camp' or training place for commandos. This works fine, as does the grim North Sea setting. The murderer's gimmick, however, is not that great, and he really does behave like the psychopathic idiot he is, makes some stupid blunders, in spite of H.M.'s calling him so clever. Book works well for its initial shock value but doesn't hold up under re-reading.

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?)
[There are a couple of good set pieces: one in an abandoned prision condemned cell (reminiscent of Hag's Nook) and a climactic scene in a mirror maze; the rest is middling but not actually bad.]

* Do people remember events from 20 years ago in such detail? Also can one hide behind a six-inch-high parapet? The killer, unusually for the author, is psychopathic.

19. A GRAVEYARD TO LET (1949) §
(Set in New York City and Westchester county; H.M. very funny -- and very spry for a geriatric, if we accept bio data from the earliest books -- born in 1871 according to Plague Court)
[Man* dives into swimming pool and vanishes; we've had disappearances in JDC/CD before, but this is one of the most ingenious. Unfortunately, there is no murder, and the comedy is very low-brow.]

* The victim, Manning, with his King-Lear complex, is one of CD's most interesting, and the love story, for once, is not as cloying and jejune as usual. However, his motivation is not very believable.

-- Might as well mention here the author's sports interests, which are basically just three: fencing, baseball, and boxing. Practically everything else (except maybe tennis, and golf in a sarcastic way) is pretty much ignored or sneered at. This novel has some baseball in it that is rather fun, although it is hard to believe that H.M. was once a fine player and still has his touch at the age of 80 or so.

20. NIGHT AT THE MOCKING WIDOW (1950)
(Poison-pen letters in a village; an English "cosy")
[The village atmosphere is very well handled*, especially its closed-mindedness. The Druidical Mocking Widow monolith is a nice touch even if there is nothing like it in England. But the motivation of the poison-pen writer and murderer is not rational.]

* CD/JDC set as many mysteries in country houses and small villages as he did in London, but for the most part one would never call them 'cosies'. There are, usually, the classic ingredients: a vicar, a fête, a publican, a postmistress, a colonel, etc., but the stories are mostly too eerie or grim to be described as cosy. This one, however, is close enough almost to the point of parody to be called one, and has some good comic/slapstick moments.

21. BEHIND THE CRIMSON BLIND (1952)
(Set in Tangier; a Raffles-type crook; fantasm, not that good)
[The setting is interesting and fun -- Tangier was then an international open port. Unfortunately, the heroine is one of CD's silliest ginches (who is addressed as 'Baggage' by her husband), and the nasty burglar 'Iron Chest' is over-romanticized.*]

*An example of CD's immoralist tendencies: the villain is allowed to abscond because H.M. regards him as a modern Robin Hood, whereas he is in fact rather vicious and amoral.

22. THE CAVALIER'S CUP (1953)
(Country-house burglary; simple but clean gimmick; no murder)
[This is basically a comic novel in the Wodehouse vein with a mystery problem thrown in for good measure. It is a very funny story if you're in the mood (otherwise it is childish), but not a Golden Age Mystery*.]

* It is interesting, but sad, to see how much Merrivale and Masters have descended since their first appearance: H.M. is now pretty much a buffoon, taking singing lessons from Signor Ravioli and abetting shooting arrows at the backsides of lady Labour Members of Parliament, and Masters has degenerated from the expert and experienced inspector of Plague Court to a canting Labourite who disapproves of anybody being so politically incorrect as to retain a butler, in effect, a humbug. H.M. and Master, beyond the usual bickering, actually show loathing for each other -- not pleasant. JDC/CD was really fed up with England at this point, but at least he wound up the series in a comic vein.

--. MERRIVALE, MARCH, AND MURDER (1991)§§
(D. Greene anthology of the H.M. short stories, Col. March (complete), etc. -- this has the last H.M. story, a novella, that Carr did: "All in a Maze" (1956) -- aka "Ministry of Miracles" -- that is quite good, ending up with a murderous pursuit in a maze.* It also contains the only other H.M. short story, "The House in Goblin Wood," which is a lot of fun. This book belongs on your collector's shelf.)

* Story has two nice set pieces -- the whispering gallery in St. Paul's Cathedral dome and the Hampton Court maze.

Other Carter Dickson Books

1. THE BOWSTRING MURDERS (1933)
[By 'Carr' Dickson]
(Locked-room murder in a castle*; apparently recycled juvenilia)
[Detective: John Gaunt, sottish forensic scientist]

* A floor plan would have been very useful in this book as it is hard to visualize the layout and the events; the waterfall is implausible -- no English castle has such a thing -- doesn't he really mean a sluice gate? This is a very sloppily written book -- Greene says Carr did it in a hurry to pay for his trip back to England to visit his fiancée. A very poor effort for the most part. Gaunt, although he had potential, is just a bore, not even as interesting as Bencolin.

2. THE THIRD BULLET (1937) (short stories)
[Detective: Col. Marquis, Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner, in one story, but the others are often-collected stories about Fell, H.M., March]
(Title story is an aborted novel (1937), which would have worked better if fleshed out*)
[This is actually a nice collection as a CD/JDC sampler, although except for the title story, all the rest have been reprinted in more comprehensive selections.]

* If this story is not enough fleshed-out to be effective, that brings up the point that other books by this author are too padded out. A matter of judgment and scheduling and the pressures of publishers -- contracts had to be fulfilled and deadlines met. No doubt if Carr didn't have to make a living by his writing, he could have gone back and revised all his books and stories, especially the ones he wrote in a hurry, but also some that very percipient critics such as Anthony Boucher pointed out easily correctible flaws in. Carr was somewhat arrogant about accepting emendations to his text, even his spelling of 'wobble' as 'wabble' (which is often printed both ways in the same book).

-- By the way, Greene points out that this story was chopped down even farther, and somewhat ineptly, by Ellery Queen for his magazine, so that the version presented here is truncated to the point of dullness. The original version was reprinted in Fell and Foul Play and is somewhat better -- but the original criticism still stands that this should have been a full novel, giving the author time and patience to correct some very sloppy writing.

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).
Update (8/01): Bought a copy via the Internet. See the Carr--historical page for comments.

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