John Dickson Carr Data Base: Books

Full Listing by Date (click on the dagger to view the entry, then scroll down the page) or else you can go to Search

"The Shadow of the Goat" (1926) [SS]
"The Fourth Suspect" (1927) [SS]
"The Ends of Justice" (1927) [SS]
"The Murder in Number Four" (1928) [SS]
It Walks by Night (1930) [CD]
The Lost Gallows (1931) [CD]
Castle Skull (1931) [CD]
The Corpse in the Waxworks (1932) [CD]
Poison in Jest (1932) [CD]
Hag's Nook (1933) [CD]
The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933) [CD]
The Bowstring Murders (1933) [CD]
The Eight of Swords (1934) [CD]
The Blind Barber (1934) [CD]
Devil Kinsmere (1934) [HN]
The Plague Court Murders (1934) [CD]
The White Priory Murders (1934) [CD]
Death-Watch (1935) [CD]
The Three Coffins (1935) [CD]
The Red Widow Murders (1935) [CD]
The Unicorn Murders (1935) [CD]
The Arabian Nights Murder (1936) [CD]
The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey (1936) [NF]
The Punch and Judy Murders (1936) [CD]
"The Wrong Problem" (1936) [SS]
The Four False Weapons (1937) [CD]
The Burning Court (1937) [MS]
The Third Bullet (1937) [SS]
The Peacock Feather Murders (1937) [CD]
"The Third Bullet" (1937) [SS]
To Wake the Dead (1938) [CD]
The Crooked Hinge (1938) [CD]
The Judas Window (1938) [CD]
Death in Five Boxes (1938) [CD]
"The New Invisible Man" (1938) [SS]
"The Crime in Nobody's Room" (1938) [SS]
"Error at Daybreak" (1938) [SS]
Fatal Descent (1939) [CD]
The Problem of the Green Capsule (1939) [CD]
The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939) [CD]
The Reader Is Warned (1939) [CD]
"Hot Money" (1939) [SS]
"Death in the Dressing Room" (1939) [SS]
"The Empty Flat" (1939) [SS]
"The Silver Curtain" (1939) [SS]
"Who Killed Matthew Corbin?" (1939) [RP]
The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940) [CD]
And So to Murder (1940) [CD]
Nine -- and Death Makes Ten (1940) [CD]
"The Footprint in the Sky" (1940) [SS]
"The Proverbial Murder" (1940) [SS]
"The Locked Room" (1940) [SS]
"The Incautious Burglar" (1940) [SS]
"The Devil in the Summer-house" (1940) [RP]
The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) [CD]
Seeing Is Believing (1941) [CD]
"William Wilson's Racket" (1941) [SS]
"The Black Minute" (1941) [RP]
"Speak of the Devil" (1941) [RP]
The Emperor's Snuff Box (1942) [CD]
Death Turns the Tables (1942) [CD]
The Gilded Man (1942) [CD]
"The Bride Vanishes" (1942) [RP]
"Will You Make a Bet with Death?" (1942) [RP]
She Died a Lady (1943) [CD]
"Cabin B-13" (1943) [RP]
"The Hangman Won't Wait" (1943) [RP]
"The Phantom Archer" (1943) [RP]
"The Dead Sleep Lightly" (1943) [RP]
"The Devil's Saint" (1943) [RP]
Till Death Do Us Part (1944) [CD]
He Wouldn't Kill Patience (1944) [CD]
"The Dragon in the Pool" (1944) [RP]
"Death Has Four Faces" (1944) [RP]
"Vampire Tower" (1944) [RP]
"The Devil's Manuscript" (1944) [RP]
The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (1945) [CD]
He Who Whispers (1946) [CD]
My Late Wives (1946) [CD]
"The House in Goblin Wood" (1946) [SS]
"The Grandest Game in the World" (1946) [NF]
The Sleeping Sphinx (1947) [CD]
The Skeleton in the Clock (1948) [CD]
The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1949) [NF]
Below Suspicion (1949) [CD]
A Graveyard to Let (1949) [CD]
The Bride of Newgate (1950) [HN]
Night at the Mocking Widow (1950) [CD]
The Devil in Velvet (1951) [HN]
The Nine Wrong Answers (1952) [CD]
The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (1952) [SS]
Behind the Crimson Blind (1952) [CD]
The Cavalier's Cup (1953) [CD]
Captain Cut-Throat (1955) [HN]
"White Tiger Passage" (1955) [RP]
"The Villa of the Damned" (1955) [RP]
Patrick Butler for the Defense (1956) [CD]
Fear Is the Same (1956) [HN]
"All in a Maze" (1956) [SS]
Fire, Burn! (1957) [HN]
"Invisible Hands" (1957) [SS]
The Dead Man's Knock (1958) [CD]
Scandal at High Chimneys (1959) [HN]
In Spite of Thunder (1960) [CD]
The Witch of the Low Tide (1961) [HN]
The Demoniacs (1962) [HN]
The Men Who Explained Miracles (1964) [SS]
Most Secret (1964) [HN]
The House at Satan's Elbow (1965) [CD]
Panic in Box C (1966) [CD]
Dark of the Moon (1967) [CD]
Papa La-Bas (1968) [HN]
The Ghost's High Noon (1969) [HN]
Deadly Hall (1971) [HN]
The Hungry Goblin (1972) [HN]
"Stand and Deliver" (1973) [NF]
The Door to Doom (1980) [SS]
The Department of Queer Complaints (1981) [SS]
The Dead Sleep Lightly (1983) [RP]
Fell and Foul Play (1991) [SS]
Merrivale, March, and Murder (1991) [SS]
Speak of the Devil (1994) [RP]
The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995) [MS]

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The Emperor's Snuff Box	[]	(1942)
Author: Carr	Detective: Kinross	Type: CD
Publisher's Blurb Beside the dead body of Sir Maurice Lawes are the shattered remains of a snuff-box that once belonged to Napoleon. These fragments tell a tale, or rather two tales, one true and one false. How an English expert in criminology forces the evidence to 'tell' the truth about what happened and to point out the real murderer makes for what Time called "a brilliant exercise in detecting and chilling adventure in villainy." [Carroll&Graf edition]
Comment 1 (Grobius) Set in a French Channel resort; least likely suspect is guilty. Detective: Dermot Kinross, Psychologist, a one-shot. 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. An excellent piece of misdirection, one of Carr's cleverest; the hypocrisy of some of the characters is well done too -- the sleazy villain comes across better than the upright fiancé.
Comment 2 (The_Thin_Man) If I had to choose a single novel whose characterisation was Carr's strongest, this would probably be it. (Although "The Waxworks Murders" and "The Ten Teacups" would come pretty darn close.) It's a tour-de-force whose twists and turns SHOULD be obvious, but somehow aren't. The characters are certainly better than the plot - the "red herrings" in particular are very intrusive - but the idea of evidence pointing "both ways" is good. (It's also blatantly stolen from Agatha Christie's "The Seven Dials Mystery", which contains perhaps the best piece of deception in any mystery story.) Toby in particular is a brilliant portrait. My advice is to forget "Snuff Box"'s flaws and wallow in its glorious strengths.
Comment 3 ()
Comment 4 ()
URL:	URL:	Rating: 4

* Type: CD (classic detective), NF (non-fiction), SS (short stories), RP (radio plays), HN (historical novels), MS (miscellaneous). Short pieces are in quotation marks.