Carter Dickson

I've chosen to list separately John Dickson Carr's books featuring Sir Henry Merrivale published under his pseudonym Carter Dickson because, well, it's my game, so my rules.  

I've always like these books a little better than the Gideon Fell books, probably because they tend to be a bit lighter and more fun than the Fell books.  Just as Gideon Fell was modeled on G. K. Chesterton, Sir Henry Merrivale was modeled on Sir Winston Churchill.  Corpulent, irascible, given to smoking cigars, this is the Churchill of the years between the war.  

Having said that, Nine And Death Makes Ten reminded me of most of the things I don't like about Carr's books, mainly the lovely but brain-dead female characters who develop an irrational dislike of the viewpoint male character and end up falling in love with him at the last minute, amid the air of frenzied hysteria the characters express.  The plot of this book, set on an ocean liner pressed into wartime service as a munitions transport with only nine civilian passengers aboard, strains credulity.  Grade:  C. 

 
And So To Murder does much the same thing: young female author takes an irrational dislike to male detective novelist, ends up falling in love with him.  Both characters are hired to write screenplays for a movie company, but someone on the premises apparently has it in for the young woman, first attempting to maim her with vitriol, then shoots at her.  The murder device is another of Carr's tricky bits involving timing that again strains credulity.  Grade:  C. 

 
I didn't find either of those books entertaining enough to ever want to read again, and when I picked up the next book, She Died A Lady, I remembered that I hadn't much liked it the first time I read it, so skipped it this time.  I don't know what Carr had against women, but most of the murder victims in these three books are women.  Not even giving this one a grade.  I do remember like the next one on the list, so I'll move on to that one.  

On the other hand, I've always liked The Curse of the Bronze Lamp, even though Sir Henry is over the top several times in this one.  The supposed curse is on a bronze lamp discovered during the excavation of an Egyptian tomb by an expedition led by the Earl of Severn.  One member of the expedition has already died, leading to speculation in the newspapers of a curse reminiscent of the experiences of the members of the expedition to excavate King Tut's tomb led by Lord Carnavon in the 1920s, ten years before this story is set.  When the Earl's daughter, who is determined to scotch the rumors of a curse disappears, the rumors gain even more credence.  It's up to Sir Henry to sort it all out. Grade:  A. 

 
A Graveyard To Let used to be on my OK list, but now I think it's slipped down to the ho-hum list.  Again, the plot depends on the split second timing that would never come off in real life.  Sir Henry is visiting an old friend, Frederick Manning, in New York who has invited him to witness a miracle.  The miracle does come off, Manning dives fully clothed into a swimming pool and vanishes before HM's eyes.  Later Manning is found barely alive from a gunshot wound in a nearby overgrown cemetery, and it's up to HM to sort it out before another attempt at murder comes off.  Grade:  C.  

The Cavalier's Cup also used to be on the OK list, but also has slipped down.  Once again, characters who have apparently taken a violent dislike to each other secretly admire each other, in this case a father-in-law and son-in-law.  The mystery involves the failure of burglars to steal an ornate, gaudy, golden cup encrusted with precious stones that was created by the family in the Victorian era to commemorate an event that occurred centuries earlier during the English Civil War.  The safe is burgled, the cup is left behind and nothing else is stolen.  Again, it's up to Sir Henry to solve the mystery.  Grade: C.  

I was never very fond of Night At The Mocking Widow, and rereading it confirmed that low opinion.  Sir Henry is lured to a small village to solve the riddle of who is sending poison pen letters to the local villagers; the letters have already triggered one suicide and shortly also lead to outright murder.  Some parts of this one are fairly plausible, but I guess I'm just tired of Carr's manufactured hysteria.  Grade: C.  

Behind The Crimson Blind is another one that never quite worked for me, and didn't this time, either. Sir Henry is on an incognito trip to Tangier, where he is snared into trying to capture a brazen jewel thief known only as Iron Chest because of the decorated iron box he carries.  Grade:  C. 

I don't know why Carr's female characters all have to be either brain-dead, hysterical sexpots or seemingly cold, aloof women only waiting for the right male to light their fires, but I'm tired of it.  Enough of it, I'll keep the Bronze Lamp, but the rest of these are headed for the donation bin.  

  

Lillian De La Torre

 Lillian De La Torre's short stories chronicle the fictional mysteries solved by Dr. Samuel Johnson related in the language and style of his real life biographer, James Boswell, in Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector and The Detections of Dr. Sam: Johnson.  Although the stories are fiction, they are drawn from people and events in Johnson's life.  For example, Samuel Johnson never found Prince Charlie's Ruby, but he did meet Flora MacDonald on his trip to the Isle of Skye and did sleep in Prince Charlie's room.  

My favorite story was The Monboddo Ape Boy, a fictional story involving a real Scottish judge and linguistic scientist, James Burnett, known as Lord Monboddo, who was renowned for his scholarship and his eccentricity.     

Wilkie Collins

 It's been decades since I read Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, and I had forgotten how fascinating that book is.  Like many authors of his time, Collins wrote the book as a serial for magazine publication in both the U.K. and the United States; his style is not exactly cliff-hanger, but the end of each chapter leaves you with pleasurable anticipation of what will happen in the next one.

The Moonstone starts with the theft of a legendary diamond from an Indian temple, and the curse that follows the diamond and anyone who possesses it.  The diamond is bequeathed as a birthday gift to a young woman, Rachel Verinder, who wears it to her birthday dinner; that night the diamond is stolen from her room.   Careful searching by her cousin Franklin Blake and Sergeant Cuff of Scotland Yard, reputed to be the best detective in England, produces no sign of the diamond.  Rachel refuses to cooperate with the investigation and in fact, opposes the continuation of it.  

    Wilkie Collins uses successive multiple viewpoints to move the story forward, starting with that of Gabriel Betteredge, the elderly Verinder family head servant, who is much given to consulting the oracle of his tattered copy of Robinson Crusoe in moments of doubt or distress and who makes a very creditable Watson to Sergeant Cuff.  Betteredge narrates the story up to the loss of the diamond; the evangelistic and annoying Miss Clack takes up the narrative to contribute what she herself has witnessed and overheard following the disappearance of the diamond; the family attorney, Mr. Bruff then contributes his share of the story, and it moves on through several more narrators to its eventual resolution.  Wilkie Collins rightly called the story a "romance", and it's a fascinating one.    Grade:  A.  

The Woman In White, published in 1860, six years before The Moonstone, also uses multiple viewpoints to narrate the story, although most of the story is carried by Walter Hartright, an artist and illustrator, who does most of the detective work, and by Marian Holcombe.  The story starts with an encounter one night between Hartright and a mysterious woman dressed all in white who asks the way to London.  He gives it to her, then shortly thereafter finds that she has escaped from a lunatic asylum.  He again encounters her in a country churchyard and realizes that she closely resembles Laura Fairly, his drawing student with whom he has fallen in love.  Laura is engaged to and subsequently marries Sir Percival Glyde, who connives with his friend, the menacing Count Fosco, to gain control of Laura's considerable fortune, while Walter Hartright is absent on a scientific expedition to Central America.  When Hartright returns, he is told that Laura has died, but suspects that it was Anne Catherick, the mysterious woman in white, who has died instead.  Aided by Laura's elder half sister, Marian Halcombe, who has liberated Laura from the lunatic asylum where Sir Percival had concealed her under Anne Catherick's name, Walter proceeds to have Laura's identity restored to her.  Grade:  B.  

     

Freeman Wills Croft

 Freeman Wills Crofts Inspector French books are classic Golden Age police procedural mysteries, following Scotland Yard detective Inspector French's investigative process step by step through each case.  

Inspector French's Greatest Case involves the robbery of a diamond merchant's safe of gems and cash and the murder of an elderly clerk.  The hunt for clues leads Inspector French to Amsterdam, Switzerland and Spain, but the case becomes increasingly frustrating as each clue seems to lead to nothing further.  As a railway engineer, Crofts uses many instances where railway timetables feature, and this case certainly illustrates that.  Grade:  B.  

In The Cheyne Mystery, Maxwell Cheyne meets a stranger at a country hotel, has dinner and a drink with him, and awakens hours later to find that the man has drugged him, searched his pockets and also burgled his house, but has stolen nothing in either case.  Further encounters with the stranger and his gang culminate in their attempt to kill him, and he heads for Scotland Yard, where the case is given to Inspector French.  French and Cheyne work on solving the puzzle of the document the gang has been pursuing, with the chase leading French first to Belgium and then to the open seas.  Grade:  B.

Although the Crime At Guildford is not officially his case, the murder of a member of a prominent firm of jewelers appears to  Chief Inspector French to be connected to the robbery of an enormous amount of gems from the firm's safe in London that same weekend, and he works closely with the police at Guildford to solve both cases.  Pursuit of the solution leads him and his team to France, Brussels and Amsterdam before it's over.  Grade:  B.  

I have two more of Croft's Inspector French books, A Losing Game and Death of a Train, but didn't finish them.   I just got tired of reading the plodding style.  The first book deals with the  murder of a blackmailing moneylender and the second is a WWII spy thriller, but I just got tired of them both.  Grade: C.  

So that's it for the authors whose names begin with C.  

Barbra Colley

 Barbra Colley's Death Tidies Up features Charlotte La Rue, the owner of a New Orleans cleaning company, Maid For A Day.  When one of her employees finds a dead body of a man whose funeral Charlotte attended two years before, Charlotte knows something is fishy in New Orleans historic Garden District.  Grade:  C.   

V. C. Clinton-Baddeley

 V. C. Clinton-Baddeley's Dr. Davie books, published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, have long been favorites of mine.  Dr. R. V. Davie is an elderly fellow of St. Nicholas' College, Cambridge University, who has a fondness for detective novels and opera.  His natural curiosity about people and the world often leads him into unusual situations. 

 
The sudden death of a university lecturer during the course of a public speech in Death's Bright Dart leads Dr. Davie to investigate the speaker's murky past, a stolen blowpipe, and the production methods and use of arrow poisons. This one involves some tricky calculating of the college's internal geography that I found confusing, although there is a map to help figure it out.  Grade:  B for the mystery, Grade A for the pleasure of Dr. Davie's company.   

My Foe Outstretch'd Beneath The Tree finds Dr. Davie involved with a mysterious death at his London club; a member, a former police officer, has been found dead in the club's central garden apparently a victim of suffocation.  Only a few hours earlier, Dr. Davie had enlisted the man's help to play a cassette tape recording or a language lesson with a strange addition and a few bars of a familiar opera aria.  Again, Grade: B for the mystery (I really don't think it would work), Grade:  A for the wry humor and captivating writing.   

Only A Matter Of Time finds Dr. Davie attending the King's Lacey music and poetry festival.  Dr. Davie's quiet and entirely unofficial investigation of the deaths of an old antique dealing friend and of the secretary of an industrial corporation  raises the question:  were the murders the product of events in the past, or the result of modern industrial espionage?  Grade:  A.  

Revisiting the Devonshire village where he was born for the funeral of his boyhood friend Robert, Dr. Davie encounters unsettling information about Robert's interest in the death of a neighbor in No Case For The Police.  His curiosity soon leads him to poke his nose into that matter, of course.  Grade:  A.  

Dr. Davie attends a student commedia dell'arte performance at a London drama school in To Study A Long Silence during which one of the actors is killed shortly before he is due to go on stage to take final bows.  Naturally, Dr. Davie wants to know how and why.  Grade:  A.  

Sadly, the author died shortly after completing the last book, and after rounding up the investigation in London, Dr. Davie returns to his beloved Cambridge and falls asleep in his chair.  

Douglas Clark

Now it's on to the work of Douglas Clark whose Scotland Yard detective team of George Masters and William Green specialize in difficult cases involving medical or pharmaceutical issues.  Although Masters and Green initially dislike and irritate each other, the team is so successful that the Yard won't break them up.  I don't have all the books, so I'll just go with the ones I have, published from about 1970 into the 1990s.  

2 Dec 2024

Masters and Green are called in to investigate the sudden death of a young diabetic woman in Sick To Death.  Otherwise healthy, the woman suddenly went into a diabetic coma and died overnight; when her insulin supply was found to be useless, the team is called in to investigate.  Grade:  B. 

 

4 Dec 2024

A popular resident dies of poisoning at the house of the most hated man in a tight suburban neighborhood in Premedicated Murder, and Masters and Green are called in to solve it.  Although the unpopular man is the universal choice as murderer, he had no motive.  But who did?  I felt the plot of this one was a bit far fetched.  Grade:  B.

6 Dec 2024

When the third member of a secure British government research facility dies in a mountaineering accident in Dread And Water, it looks as if the deaths of two other scientists from the same department in similar circumstances also might not have been accidents.   Masters and Green have to detect a highly unusual murder weapon.  Grade:  A.   

10 Dec 2024

Table D'Hote finds the team of Masters and Green on the verge of finally splitting up; their two sergeants have moved on to promotions, and William Green is two years away from retirement.  He's been given permission to look for another assignment, but nobody wants to take on an officer that close to retiring.  Perversely, he now decides he wants to stay, and George Masters keeps him on to tackle the case of a doctor's wife who has died unexpectedly under suspicious circumstances.  Grade:  A.

13 Dec 2024

On their way to investigate the sudden death of the senior partner in a firm of real estate agents and auction brokers in The Gimmel Flask, Masters reveals that he scents local corruption as well as murder.  On thing I like about this series is that it allows for the gradual evolution of the relationship between Masters and Green.  They still irritate each other from time to time, but by this point they are functioning with much more mutual respect.  Grade:  A.   

16 Dec 2024

When their car breaks down near an abandoned church, Masters and Green poke around in the churchyard while their sergeants go for help in Heberden's Seat.  Naturally, their exploration leads them to discover a dead body in the churchyard well.  I felt the plot of this one didn't hang together too well and the solution was pretty obvious.  Grade: B.

18 Dec 2024

The man Masters' mother-in-law, Bella, intended to marry has died of a heart attack after being shot by a poacher in Poacher's Bag.  The local police have arrested the poacher and and are satisfied with their case, but Bella is not; she wants Masters and Green to investigate the matter.  They are reluctant to "poach" on the locals' turf, and must proceed diplomatically.  Grade:  B.  

19 Dec 2024

The popular headmistress of a posh girls' school dies suddenly of poisoning from seeds of the laburnum tree in Golden Rain.  A cursory investigation by the local police fails to reveal how she might have ingested the seeds, so Masters and Green's team is called in by the local bigwigs.  Grade:  B.

21 Dec 2024

Hatred is said to be The Longest Pleasure.  When a rare type of botulism breaks out in four different parts of England, the authorities assume foul play and assign Masters and Green to track down the source.  This one is a cracking good read; the suspense is so good that in spite of the fact that I've read it several times before,  it still kept me up most of the night.  Grade:  A+.  

31 Dec 2024

I read four books over the holidays, so I'll do them all at once.

An intoxicated young hoodlum is taken into police custody and dies in a jail cell overnight from an unusual intoxicant in Shelf Life.  Complicating matters is the fact that he is the father of the duty sergeant's daughter's unborn baby.  That's enough to get Masters and Green's team called in to sort matters out.  Grade:  B.

An even more unusual situation occurs in Roast Eggs, when Masters is appealed to by an old barrister friend; he's in the middle of prosecuting a murder case and fears that the man accused of murdering his wife by setting their house on fire will be acquitted.  Masters has only the weekend to come up with the necessary new evidence before the trial resumes the following Monday.  Grade:  A.

Elderly Mrs. Carlow has driven her family and neighbors nuts for years with her arrogant and manipulative behavior, often resorting to overdosing on her heart medications when she wants attention.    When another overdose proves fatal, the question is whether she intended to commit suicide or was murdered; complicating matters is the fact that the local coroner, the police superintendent and other local notables are all related to her, either by blood or by marriage in Vicious Circle.  Since they cannot ethically investigate the matter themselves, Masters and Green are called in to investigate.  Grade:  B.  

The Monday Theory involves the death of a popular newspaper columnist and her boyfriend from death by arsine poisoning.  The mystery is OK, but I was annoyed by Clark's using an obnoxious straw man (or woman in this case) to lambaste political liberals.  Grade:  C for that reason.  

2 Jan 2025

Bill Green receives a letter from an old acquaintance from his days in the British Army during WWII in Dead Letter.  The letter states that the writer has witnessed a murder and that a senior police official was involved.  Worse yet, the letter is unsigned and does not give the writer's location.  The team is forced to sift through the memories of old soldiers from Bill's unit to try to identify the writer, who is clearly in fear of his life.  By the time they do identify him, he is dying, victim of an apparent hit-and-run accident, so the team is forced to try to find the site of the first murder, and identify the bent copper, on their own.  Grade:  A.  

3 Jan 2025

George Masters has been given an assignment so secret that he can't even tell his team about it until just before they need to go into action in Jewelled Eye.  The assignment is to find out who kidnapped an important scientist working on a cure for cancer, and determine what has become of him.  As usual, the team has to assess the evidence and then make intuitive leaps to come up with the solution.  Grade:  A.

7 Jan 2025

Masters and his team have been asked to review the files of eleven murder cases of women that have occurred in the Northern District over the past year to see if they can spot any common theme among the murders in Performance.   Masters does so and predicts that another woman will be murdered on or shortly after December 3rd, the date of the next full moon.  He and the team are attending a performance of Handel's Messiah when a popular contralto collapses onstage at the height of her triumph.  Grade:  A.  

In Storm Center Masters is recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered in Jewelled Eye.  Although he is on sick leave, he's been asked to deliver a series of lectures at the Police College, ostensibly a paid vacation on which he can take his wife and son along.  Of course, it turns out that the head of the college has an ulterior motive for requesting his presence; he wants him and his team to investigate the unexplained disappearances of two young men, five years apart, that seem to involve one of the College's foreign students.  Grade:  A.  

10 Jan 2025

The Big Grouse has Masters and Green hunting for the traveling sales representative of a plastics company who disappeared seven months earlier.  Their hunt takes them to the locality where the man worked; they find his car, but no sign of a body.  Grade:  B.  

10 Jan 2025

The son of a professional colleague of Masters and Green has been poisoned while participating in a sailing race at sea in Plain Sailing.  With no knowledge of sailing terms and techniques, and no apparent motive for either suicide or murder, Masters finds himself a bit a sea, too, in the chaos and confusion of a sailing community in the middle of an important competition.  I found this one a bit confusing; in fact, I'm still not entirely sure who dunnit or why.  Grade:  B.  

14 Jan 2025

A wealthy industrialist and friend of George and Wanda Masters, who suffers from a debilitating disease, has invited them to his birthday party in Bitter Water.  They can't attend, but when a young actress who did attend dies mysteriously a few days later, Masters and Green are called to investigate.  They find that the actress had fallen into the swimming pool at the party where she may have contracted the infection that killed her.  Grade:  B.  

So that's it for the works of Douglas Clark.  Although these books are technically police procedural mysteries, Masters and Green rely less on traditional police procedures and more on George Masters' flights of intuition and imagination than on routine investigation techniques.