My Pan paperback of John Dickson Carr's Panic in Box C (see the above cover image) contains the ultimate endorsement - a positive quote from Agatha Christie, who said, 'Very few detective stories baffle me nowadays but Mr Carr's always do.' Of course, the two writer were friends, but it's certainly true that at his best, and even when not quite on top form, Carr was very, very good at bamboozling his readers. Alas, this is a story when I was able to figure out whodunit, even if some aspects of the solution weren't clear to me.
This was the penultimate novel to feature Dr Gideon Fell, although he pops in and out of the action in a rather disjointed way. The novel was published in 1960, and although Carr was barely sixty years old at that time, it does read like an old man's work, lacking the tightness and intensity of his excellent Golden Age mysteries.
The first two chapters, which are quite lengthy, represent a sort of extended prologue. They take place on ship, the RMS lllyria , which is sailing for the States. Fell is on board, and so is a famous actress called Margery Vane. We are given quite extensive chunks of information in slightly indigestible form, and events conclude with Margery Vane talking about a ghost and apparently being shot at.
We then leap forward several months, and Fell again becomes involved with Margery Vane and members of her circle. There's a lot of discussion about a performance of Romeo and Juliet and some of the odd bits of trivia that Carr drops into the narrative are interesting if not always hugely relevant. But some of the characters are irritating (the relationship between Fell's pal Philip Knox and his long-estranged wife Judy in particular - this pair were far less appealing to me than they seemed to be to Carr). And the murder mystery aspect of the novel is disjointed. All in all, I was pretty disappointed with this one.
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