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 Skeleton in the Clock	[]	(1948)
Author: Dickson	Detective: Merrivale	Type: CD
Publisher's Blurb 1958 Pan: FEAR clutched the five of them as they groped their way through the dank, enveloping darkness of the deserted prison— a fear intensified by the spirits of those long dead. Curiosity started it all, at 3 am in Ruth Callice’s flat. … It ended with MURDER!
Comment 1 (Grobius) 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 this author, is actually psychopathic.
Comment 2 (hacklehorn) The last readable H.M.--H.M. does function, both as detective and as comic relief (the business with the skeleton is genuinely funny--pure Edmund Crispin, as is his duel with Lady Brayle). Murder was committed twenty years before the action, and murder is sparked off in the present by anonymous letters. The prison scenes show Carr's unrivalled skill in creating atmosphere--but is let down by some pig-headnedness among the male characters. The subject matter (murdered children) is particularly nasty, and nasty in a very different way from THE PLAGUE COURT MURDERS or THE BURNING COURT--this is genuine headline stuff, and not the Mayhem Parva of which Carr and others were accused. The murderer's identity is a genuine surprise, although insanity is a weak motive (or is it?--could this be one of Carr's most realistic tales?).
Comment 3 (The_Thin_Man) One of Carr's most convincingly nasty murderers, and also one of his most surprising despite a wealth of clues - Carr plays scrupulously fair in this one. Some of the characters could do with more characterisation - Cecily in particular - but this is one of Carr's best. The prison scenes are unforgettable.
Comment 4 ()
URL:	URL:	Rating: 7

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