John Dickson Carr

 And now we're done with the B authors and on to the Cs, starting with John Dickson Carr, master of the classic locked room mystery.  Carr also wrote mysteries under the pseudonym Carter Dickson, and I will deal with those when I get to the letter D, which, at the rate this project is going, will probably be several years from now.  I initially thought it would take me about a year to get through the collection, but nine months later and I'm still not even done with the first shelf.  

The Men Who Explained Miracles is a collection of short stories featuring Carr's detectives:  Colonel Marsh of Scotland Yard's mythical Department of Queer Complaints; two Dr. Gideon Fell stories; two Secret Service stories and a Sir Henry Merrivale novelette.  As usual with Carr, most of the stories involve something that could not have happened, yet did.  Grade:  B.  

The Mad Hatter Mystery is the second of Carr's mystery novels featuring the rotund, erudite Dr. Gideon Fell, who is very clearly modeled on  G. K. Chesterton, author of, among other works, the Father Brown mystery novels.  This story, set at the Traitor's Gate of the Tower of London, does not have the classic locked room situation, but does have a time table so tight as to seem impossible.  It's entertaining, but the characters and circumstances Carr sets up to create the "impossible" situation are so far-fetched that it makes it difficult to believe in the story.  Grade:  B.  

I was very disappointed with The Eight of Swords; I was expecting that Tarot card, found on the murder victim's body, to have some greater connection with the mystery than it actually did.  There was very little explanation of what the connection to either the murderer or the victim was, and virtually none as to the Tarot system itself.  I would have preferred that to the amount of verbiage Carr wastes on the cute girl.  Grade: C.  

I read The Blind Barber, set on an ocean liner at sea, maybe fifty years ago and don't recall having been very impressed by it.  Anthony Boucher, in his introduction to this edition, apparently found it very funny, but I found the endless descriptions of pointless arguments to be far more tiresome than funny.  He chews up endless pages with descriptions of people posturing and ranting while the murderer slips in and out unnoticed.  I won't waste time on this one again.  Grade:  C.  

The Three Coffins is another one I read many years ago and didn't much like.  However, this time around the puzzles seem more interesting, the characters less annoying, and toward the end of the book Dr. Fell launches into a lengthy dissertation on the various forms of locked room puzzles, several examples of which I recognized from other authors' stories.  That section alone makes it worth the time, as is the related discussion of why we all feel a bit cheated when "magic" tricks or illusions are explained.  Grade:  B.

The Arabian Nights Murder, set in a private museum owned by a wealthy collector of Arabian artifacts, is another book that has a large cast of confusing characters milling around doing odd things.  The feature that sets this book apart is that the story is told by three successive police narrators: Inspector Carruthers, who is the first on the scene at the museum; Sir Herbert Armstrong, head of the Criminal Investigation Division of Scotland Yard and a personal friend of the owner of the museum; and Superintendent Hadley, each of whom clears up the questions raised by the story told by the speaker before him, but whose own story raises more questions for the next narrator.  Then it's up to Dr. Fell to untangle the web and set things to rights.  It's an interesting device, but not enough to make me want to read it again.  Grade: C .  

In The Crooked Hinge, Dr. Fell is confronted with a case where a claimant to the estate and title of Sir John Farnleigh appears, alleging that he and the current incumbent of the estate, traveling as teenagers aboard the Titanic, had switched identities and that he is the rightful heir to the estate.  I feel that Carr doesn't play fair with this one.  I believe he doesn't give sufficient clues to enable the reader to figure out the device the murderer uses, or enough clues to the true character of another person involved in the crime.  Grade:  C.

The Case of the Constant Suicides is an old favorite of mine; it's another locked room puzzle, but the plot is a bit simpler, less dependent on tricky timing and thus more comprehensible than some of the others of his books.  Set in a tumble down castle in Scotland, Dr. Fell has to sort out various members of the far-flung Campbell clan amidst a rash of apparent suicides and prodigious drinking sprees.  This one is fun.  Grade:  A.

The Nine Wrong Answers sets up the plot, then gives the reader information along the way about whether the reader's presumed guesses to that point are correct.  I didn't find it interesting, skipped ahead to the end, didn't find that interesting either, so decided not to finish it.  Grade:  C.

I read Panic In Box C many years ago and only remember being unimpressed by it then.  I decided to give it another chance, but remained unimpressed this time, too.  Many unlikely characters doing unlikely things for unlikely reasons.  Grade:  C.  

 On the other hand, Patrick Butler For The Defense has always been a favorite, and will remain so after this reading.  The story moves along quickly and Carr avoids most of the pointless posturing and ranting his characters usually engage in, except for Irish barrister Patrick Butler himself, who postures when it suits his purposes and who does it to great effect.  And Butler proves that he doesn't need Dr. Fell, whose only appearance in the book is in the mention of his name, to arrive at the correct solution to the mystery.  Grade:  A.  I'll keep this one.  

And we're finally done with John Dickson Carr, at least until we come to his Sir Henry Merrivale novels under the pseudonym Carter Dickson, but those are probably a long ways away--there's still Carvic, Chandler, Chesterton and the whole Agatha Christie oeuvre to get through before we get to those.