| The Bowstring Murders | [] | (1933) |
| Author: Dickson | Detective: Gaunt | Type: CD |
Publisher's Blurb
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Comment 1 (Grobius)
[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.
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Comment 2 (Twoshed)
Why this story violates "fair play": it struck me as being virtually impossible to work out the arrangement of the rooms in the house. Gaunt mentions several times how this made it possible for him to solve the puzzle by getting a plan drawn (forgot by whom). As a mere reader with no plan I remember being pretty much lost because of this. But I will sniff in the book and come up with a few better, more detailed facts.
Just a few more rantings about that rather peculiar book. Gaunt demands a plan from very early on (beg. Chapter 8) and states its importance again at the end of Chapter 10. When the final solution is revealed Gaunt draws out the plan again and explains the crucial details of the arrangement of rooms. To my knowledge there is no way you could deduct that information from anywhere before, as the descriptions of "a big place as this" (Gaunt) are pretty confusing to say the least. I found it slightly tiring to read too, as I had no picture in my head about that place except the Armor hall and the opposite room.
Gaunt is a strangely uninteresting character, smart and clever, but lacking some human qualities, he is just annoyingly efficient and that's not enough to keep the interest up. Saying all this the business with the armour-hall is neat and enjoyable, but thank God Carr stuck to Merrivale and Dr. Fell. I found some side characters (Tairlaine, Lord Rayle) quite more interesting than the sleuth. |
Comment 3 (Dr G)
Carr got too prolific for one publisher and needed more money; thanks to this,
Carter Dickson would be born and create Sir Henry Merrivale. However, here we
still have a Carr Dickson (the publisher messed up) and John Gaunt as the
detective.
This John Gaunt is a curious character, as he establishes a connection between
H.M. and Bencolin; Carr's detectives were really cut from the same cloth. Gaunt
is (or was) a high officer, of unspecified functions, at odds with the
establishment (namely the Commissioner); it's not difficult to see that after
some more thinking, Carr decided on a head of Secret Service, thus providing
H.M. with an office. Yet, Gaunt is very close to Bencolin and in fact, Bencolin
could have been the detective.
The novel itself has a confused presentation of the scenery; that's the main
problem, because it leads to a lack of fair-play: the detective has a map and
we don't. I'm not sure if it's Carr's fault or if the publisher messed up again
and didn't include it. I didn't need the map to discover the first crime, but
for the housemaid's death it's quite necessary, or one would never guess the
subtle trick of the culprit.
The unraveling of the plot is also a bit hazy (too many Brandies?), although I
identified no holes (except for the lack of map); the pieces and clues are in
place but I find the plot to make the culprit give himself away a bit of a
stretch.
The novel gives the idea it was not as well thought of as usual (or am I being
influenced by what I read in Doug's book...)
The gimmick of the first crime is, in my opinion, a fair variation and not at
all some self-plagiarism.
This book is a bit like "Poison in Jest", a transition work -— with less
atmosphere. The next novel penned under the name Carter Dickson will introduce
Sir Henry Merrivale.
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Comment 4 (The_Thin_Man)
Carr's absolute nadir and possibly the most boring detective story ever written. Even the over-melodramatic meanderings of post-historical Carr (Satan's Elbow, Dark of the Moon) seem to me to be far superior to this tosh. John Gaunt is as completely forgettable as P. D. James' Adam Dalgleish (although at least Gaunt doesn't have the irritatingly unconvincing "religious" anxieties and doesn't feel the need to "sympathise" with every murder victim that he investigates) or Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn. The idea of somebody boarding up a door as a practical joke is just silly, the murderer and motive are both obvious from the first chapter (unlike ANY of Carr's other novels that I've read), the setting is pure conventional melodrama without any drama or atmosphere, the characters are pure cardboard, and I really couldn't care whether the mystery was "fair" or not because I couldn't care less whodunnit. What the heck was he thinking? And GAUNT HAS POTENTIAL??!!! Is the administrator out of his mind? (Sorry, ad!)
Seriously, if anybody can summon up anything good to say about this tale of a lapsed aristocrat who boards up his niece's doors as a practical joke, a secretary whose hand appears to be glued to his briefcase (practical question - does he take it to the toilet as well?) and possibly the most boring detective ever to grace the canon of detective fiction, then please let me know.
Please please please please please don't waste money buying this book. Borrow it, read it as a curiosity, and then put it somewhere dark and obscure. It's a pretty nasty hand-me-down for future generations but there's always a chance that it will never be found. Ever. |
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