| And So to Murder | [] | (1940) |
| Author: Dickson | Detective: Merrivale | Type: CD |
Publisher's Blurb
1951 Penguin blurb:
Murder is the most respectable form of literary occupation. When the vicar’s daughter at East Roystead wrote a best-seller called Desire, her Aunt Flossie used to say to the neighbours: ‘If only Monica had written a nice detective story.’ But murder in theory is a very different thing from having half a pint of vitriol poured down a speaking tube at you, as Monica discovered when she went to work as a script-writer for Albion Films. And a film studio is such a convenient place for a murder. But when Sir Henry Merrivale, great detective in his leisure moments, brings his large brain and flamboyant personality to bear on the case, everything winds to its familiar Carter Dickson conclusion—cunning, credible, and eminently satisfactory.
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Comment 1 (Grobius)
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.
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Comment 2 ()
It's been a long time since I read this, but my recollection is that I found it a fairly obnoxious--and thus very disappointing--book. |
Comment 3 (hacklehorn)
Arguably the worst Carter Dickson. It is full of what the author believes is "humour", but is unremittingly tedious; almost as tedious, in fact, as the stock characters. The plot is of a looseness to rival Ellery Queen; the murder device is impractical and improbable; and the murderer's identity is a downright cheat. This book should be forgotten about as quickly as possible; it is Carr's WYCHFORD POISONING CASE. |
Comment 4 (The_Thin_Man)
The biggest problem with this book is that one finds it rather difficult to care who the murderer is (and the final solution relies upon a bit of "cheating" as well as a complete improbability relating to identity). It's rather like one of the awful batch of Perry Mason films, where a stock group of stereotypes get involved in some awful chases, failing to create any excitement or humour whatsoever, before the murderer is finally revealed to be the least interesting person in a group of pretty uninteresting people. You don't find out about anybody's backgrounds - this at least would have given "And So To Murder" some real depth, as well as making the mystery at least theoretically possible to solve. Ironically, however, that major weakness of Carr's, the comic interplay between romantic hero and heroine, is better here than in many of his other novels. It's the one good thing about the book. |
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