Forgotten Book - Deadly Hall

Deadly Hall is a relatively little-known novel by John Dickson Carr dating from 1971. His penultimate book, it is another of his history-mysteries, set in New Orleans in 1927. Jeff Caldwell is summoned by an old friend, Dave Hobart, to the family home in the Big Easy. It's called Delys Hall, and it is an old English manor house which has been transplanted to the United States.

Delys Hall has earned the nickname Deadly Hall: some years ago, a man died there in mysterious circumstances. Now Dave is perplexed by the will of his late grandfather, who has bequeathed the Hall to Dave and his sister Serena. It seems that the Hall contains a great deal of gold, but the treasure is well hidden...

There is a good story lurking in Deadly Hall. The treasure sub-plot is, I feel, really neither here nor there, but the method by which a murder is committed on the premises, and the motive and identity of the perpetrator are interesting and satisfactory. The main difficulty is that it's quite a slog to get to "the good bits" of the story. The narrative is, to put it kindly, discursive. Pace is often lacking as the narrative gets bogged down time and again.

Carr was not a well man at the time he wrote this book, and it certainly doesn't compare with his best novels. There were, I must confess, moments when I thought that Deadly Dull might have been a better title. However, developments later in the story did engage my interest. If you haven't read Carr before, I certainly wouldn't start here. And if you're a fervent fan, you need to manage your expectations of this one. Overall, however, I was glad I battled through to the final revelations. 

The Big Easy

I've always wanted to visit New Orleans, motivated more by films set in the city that I've enjoyed, rather than books. The Big Easy and Angel Heart are two movies that made quite an impact on me when I first watched them, and I'm just back in the UK having finally achieved the ambition to visit a city that, despite the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, is rich in character as well as atmosphere. It really did live up to expectations.

On a tour of the city, the guide said that around half a dozen films are shot in the city on average each year - a statistic I found amazing. But you can see why film-makers would be attracted to somewhere with so many visual charms. The city featured memorably in a Bond movie too, Live and Let Die, as well as in The Pelican Brief, based on a novel by John Grisham (though it wasn't a book I liked as much as The Firm, which remains my favourite Grisham.)

In a short visit, it's only possible to sample some aspects of a place with such a remarkable heritage, but I enjoyed a trip down the Mississippi in the steamer Natchez, as well as hours spent mooching around the French Quarter. It was great fun to sit in a cafe, or a restaurant at night, and listen to the music. It's a very musical city, and a quick ferry trip across the river to Algiers Point ends at a terminal close to a statue of the great Louis Armstrong.

The cemetery near to Basin  Street Station is fascinating, and the grave of the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau is much visited. Again, full of atmosphere. Talking to one or two people who had been very badly affected by Katrina was a sobering reminder of the way natural disasters can prove life-changing. But my overall impression was enormously positive. It's taken me a long time to get round to discovering New Orleans in reality,as opposed to in fiction or film, but I hope to get back there again before I'm much older.