Death in Five Boxes is a novel featuring Sir Henry Merrivale that was first published in 1938. The author was Carter Dickson, the pen-name under which John Dickson Carr wrote about H.M., "the old man". And I must say that the opening scenario of this story shows Carr at his most brilliant. It's quite entrancing.
A young doctor, walking in central London one night, is accosted by a pretty young woman, who is a state of some distress. She wants him to accompany her into a house, and when he agrees to do so, first they encounter a blood-stained umbrella-cum-swordstick, and then they are presented with a bizarre situation. Five people in a room, four of them in a drugged state, the fifth one dead. One of those who is still alive is the young woman's father...
It's a great premise, and Carr develops it splendidly in the next chapters. All the people in the room are rich and well-known, all of them are - allegedly - criminals. What on earth do we make of the strange items found on their person, such as a smattering of quicklime, four watches, and part of the insides of an alarm clock? Not to mention the five boxes which apparently contain deadly secrets, and have been stolen from a solicitor's office. It's all weird, and all entrancing. Suffice to say that I was absolutely hooked.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm waned as the story progressed. The complications about how the drug was administered began to wear me down, and the presence in the story of a renowned cat burglar rather irritated me (perhaps this was unreasonable of me). We are presented with a "least likely person" culprit, but I felt, again perhaps unreasonably, that this character's motivation hadn't been adequately foreshadowed. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. In the end, I felt that a superb situation was rather inadequately resolved. But full marks for the set-up; it really did grip me.
Showing posts with label Sir Henry Merrivale. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sir Henry Merrivale. Show all posts
Friday, 27 April 2018
Friday, 7 October 2016
Forgotten Book - The Skeleton in the Clock
The Skeleton in the Clock is a 1947 Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr) novel featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. It's one of those stories (The Dungeon House is another example that springs to mind!) which involves two related murders, twenty years apart. And it's a book with some excellent features, including a noteworthy "impossible crime", lthough it's marred by one or two of the author's characteristic weaknesses
The death of Sir George Fleet twenty years ago was written off as an accident, although H.M. has his doubts. But Sir George plunged from an apparently deserted roof top, in plain sight, with nobody else visible. How could he have been pushed, or forced off the roof to his death? When H.M. and a number of other people - some of whom were present at the tragedy twenty years earlier - attend the scene in the present day, it seems inevitable that the outcome will be murder. And so it proves - eventually - although the identity of the victim will come as a surprise to most readers, as it certainly did to me.
A clock with a skeleton inside it features in the story. It's a typically arresting visual device, and Carr integrates it into his plot with great skill. There is also a superbly creepy abandoned prison - Pentecost Prison - where two of the lead characters unwisely spend the night. The Pentecost scenes are memorable, and I also thought the murder motive and the identify of the culprit were excellent. But Carr did not make as much of them as he could have done, because of his lack of interest in the darker aspects of criminal psychology.
Much as I like the Carter Dickson books (and I pick them up whenever I find one I haven't read), they sometimes suffer from an over-indulgence in tedious romances and the author's over-confidence in the extent to which Merrivale's comic behaviour is genuinely amusing. For me, a little of Sir Henry the buffoon goes a long way, and that's why I prefer the books about Dr Gideon Fell. But as a detective Merrivale is no slouch, and the solution to this puzzle is ingenious though very far-fetched. An enjoyable book, but not one of his very best..
The death of Sir George Fleet twenty years ago was written off as an accident, although H.M. has his doubts. But Sir George plunged from an apparently deserted roof top, in plain sight, with nobody else visible. How could he have been pushed, or forced off the roof to his death? When H.M. and a number of other people - some of whom were present at the tragedy twenty years earlier - attend the scene in the present day, it seems inevitable that the outcome will be murder. And so it proves - eventually - although the identity of the victim will come as a surprise to most readers, as it certainly did to me.
A clock with a skeleton inside it features in the story. It's a typically arresting visual device, and Carr integrates it into his plot with great skill. There is also a superbly creepy abandoned prison - Pentecost Prison - where two of the lead characters unwisely spend the night. The Pentecost scenes are memorable, and I also thought the murder motive and the identify of the culprit were excellent. But Carr did not make as much of them as he could have done, because of his lack of interest in the darker aspects of criminal psychology.
Much as I like the Carter Dickson books (and I pick them up whenever I find one I haven't read), they sometimes suffer from an over-indulgence in tedious romances and the author's over-confidence in the extent to which Merrivale's comic behaviour is genuinely amusing. For me, a little of Sir Henry the buffoon goes a long way, and that's why I prefer the books about Dr Gideon Fell. But as a detective Merrivale is no slouch, and the solution to this puzzle is ingenious though very far-fetched. An enjoyable book, but not one of his very best..
Friday, 24 June 2016
Forgotten Book - A Graveyard to Let
A Graveyard to Let, my Forgotten Book for today, is a novel by Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr) first published in 1949, and featuring Sir Henry Merrivale. Unusually, it's set in the author's native USA, with that extrovert Englishman Sir Henry causing chaos from the moment he arrives in New York. There are several comic scenes, and although I don't find Carr's humour as irresistible as his scenarios, there's certainly an excellent puzzle to solve.
Sir Henry is invited to visit the home of wealthy Frederick Manning to witness a miracle, and a miracle is exactly what appears to take place. Manning has three children, and he's caused consternation by becoming involved with a woman whom they believe to be some kind of floosy. There are also some reasons to believe that Manning's financial position may not be as healthy as it once was. Has he been milking corporate funds? The authorities are on his trail...
With this lead-up, Manning dives - fully clothed - into his swimming pool. But he doesn't come out again. His clothes are found, but there is no sign of him. What on earth has happened? It's a highly intriguing "impossible crime" scenario, one that has been widely admired. Nobody has ever done this sort of thing quite as well as Carr, and certainly not with such consistency.
That said, I felt that the book was flawed in some ways. For me, the solution did not live up to the brilliance of the basic premise, and the characterisation struck me as some way short of Carr at his best, with motivations that I struggled to believe in. I continue, on the whole, to prefer the Gideon Fell books to the Merrivales, but even so, the concept of a man disappearing completely after diving into a pool is memorable enough for this book to be worth a read. Below-par Carr is still, in most cases, pretty good.
Sir Henry is invited to visit the home of wealthy Frederick Manning to witness a miracle, and a miracle is exactly what appears to take place. Manning has three children, and he's caused consternation by becoming involved with a woman whom they believe to be some kind of floosy. There are also some reasons to believe that Manning's financial position may not be as healthy as it once was. Has he been milking corporate funds? The authorities are on his trail...
With this lead-up, Manning dives - fully clothed - into his swimming pool. But he doesn't come out again. His clothes are found, but there is no sign of him. What on earth has happened? It's a highly intriguing "impossible crime" scenario, one that has been widely admired. Nobody has ever done this sort of thing quite as well as Carr, and certainly not with such consistency.
That said, I felt that the book was flawed in some ways. For me, the solution did not live up to the brilliance of the basic premise, and the characterisation struck me as some way short of Carr at his best, with motivations that I struggled to believe in. I continue, on the whole, to prefer the Gideon Fell books to the Merrivales, but even so, the concept of a man disappearing completely after diving into a pool is memorable enough for this book to be worth a read. Below-par Carr is still, in most cases, pretty good.
Friday, 15 January 2016
Forgotten Book - She Died a Lady
Bob Adey was a huge fan of John Dickson Carr, and I'm delighted to have acquired a couple of his Carr books with inscriptions. One of these, She Died a Lady, was published under the name Carter Dickson in 1943; the copy is a slim war-time edition, which Carr has inscribed to a woman friend with the comment "more dirty work".
This is a Sir Henry Merrivale story, and it's a very good one. I was delighted with the way Carr pulled the wool over my eyes. With his impossible crime stories, I seldom work out the ingenious m.o. of the killer, which is often too technical for my impractical brain to grasp, but I tend to have better luck in figuring out whodunit. This time, I came up with a nice solution which proved to be hopelessly wrong. And as fellow detective fans know, there are few more satisfying reading experiences than being cleverly fooled by a cunning plot twist or two. And there several good twists in this story.
Other than an epilogue, this story is narrated by a village doctor. Sound familiar ? If not, Carr drops a hint by including a character with the same name as someone in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But is this a clue or a red herring? Suffice to say that I thought Carr pulled off a neat narrative trick here, and although it's one of which Christie would have been proud, it is original as far as I know.
What we have here is a story of a married woman who falls for a young actor. Is her elderly husband blind to what is going on? When the lovers disappear, and seem to have taken part in a suicide pact, the husband is the obvious suspect. But Carr didn't deal in obvious solutions. I felt that he chose an unwisely small pool of potential murderers, but he outsmarted me. I enjoyed this one a lot, and I bet Bob did too.
This is a Sir Henry Merrivale story, and it's a very good one. I was delighted with the way Carr pulled the wool over my eyes. With his impossible crime stories, I seldom work out the ingenious m.o. of the killer, which is often too technical for my impractical brain to grasp, but I tend to have better luck in figuring out whodunit. This time, I came up with a nice solution which proved to be hopelessly wrong. And as fellow detective fans know, there are few more satisfying reading experiences than being cleverly fooled by a cunning plot twist or two. And there several good twists in this story.
Other than an epilogue, this story is narrated by a village doctor. Sound familiar ? If not, Carr drops a hint by including a character with the same name as someone in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. But is this a clue or a red herring? Suffice to say that I thought Carr pulled off a neat narrative trick here, and although it's one of which Christie would have been proud, it is original as far as I know.
What we have here is a story of a married woman who falls for a young actor. Is her elderly husband blind to what is going on? When the lovers disappear, and seem to have taken part in a suicide pact, the husband is the obvious suspect. But Carr didn't deal in obvious solutions. I felt that he chose an unwisely small pool of potential murderers, but he outsmarted me. I enjoyed this one a lot, and I bet Bob did too.
Friday, 22 May 2015
Forgotten Book - The Judas Window
Why has it taken me so long to get round to reading Carter Dickson's The Judas Window? It is regarded highly by a number of good judges who are fans of Dickson - better known as John Dickson Carr. I suppose my main justification for describing it as a Forgotten Book is that I've forgotten, or at least neglected, to read it until now.
I've long admired Carr's work, and his mastery of the intricacies of the "impossible crime". In particular, I am a fan of the books featuring Dr Gideon Fell, the Chestertonian lexicographer who strs in classics such as The Hollow Man. A good many people prefer Sir Henry Merrivale, alias "H.M.", who is the rumbustious hero of the books written under the Carter Dickson alias. This is, in part, because of their humour - one of the neat features of the stories is that sometimes a slapstick scene will conceal an important clue to the mystery.
Merrivale features in a truly brilliant short story, "The House in Goblin Wood", but I've not been quite as keen on some of the Merrivale novels I've read. But The Judas Window is a high calibre mystery, no question of that. It's also rather different from "typical" Carr stories, in that it centres around a murder trial at the Old Bailey- and Merrivale is counsel for the defence.
His client is Jimmy Answell, a young man who seems the only possible suspect in a locked room murder case. We know Jimmy is innocent, but how on earth can this be established, in the face of apparently overwhelming evidence that he killed his prospective father-in-law? As the trial proceeds, we come across testimony from various people in the dead man's circle - but how can any of them have committed the crime? And if one of them did do the dastardly deed, for what reason?
The technicalities of the crime are very cleverly handled. I was much less convinced by the culprit's motivation, but the fact is that Carr was not as preoccupied with criminal psychology as some of his colleagues in the Detection Club. Yet he could weave a tantalising mystery, and I agree with those who rate this book highly. If you are a locked room fan, I recommend you get round to reading it more quickly than I did..
I've long admired Carr's work, and his mastery of the intricacies of the "impossible crime". In particular, I am a fan of the books featuring Dr Gideon Fell, the Chestertonian lexicographer who strs in classics such as The Hollow Man. A good many people prefer Sir Henry Merrivale, alias "H.M.", who is the rumbustious hero of the books written under the Carter Dickson alias. This is, in part, because of their humour - one of the neat features of the stories is that sometimes a slapstick scene will conceal an important clue to the mystery.
Merrivale features in a truly brilliant short story, "The House in Goblin Wood", but I've not been quite as keen on some of the Merrivale novels I've read. But The Judas Window is a high calibre mystery, no question of that. It's also rather different from "typical" Carr stories, in that it centres around a murder trial at the Old Bailey- and Merrivale is counsel for the defence.
His client is Jimmy Answell, a young man who seems the only possible suspect in a locked room murder case. We know Jimmy is innocent, but how on earth can this be established, in the face of apparently overwhelming evidence that he killed his prospective father-in-law? As the trial proceeds, we come across testimony from various people in the dead man's circle - but how can any of them have committed the crime? And if one of them did do the dastardly deed, for what reason?
The technicalities of the crime are very cleverly handled. I was much less convinced by the culprit's motivation, but the fact is that Carr was not as preoccupied with criminal psychology as some of his colleagues in the Detection Club. Yet he could weave a tantalising mystery, and I agree with those who rate this book highly. If you are a locked room fan, I recommend you get round to reading it more quickly than I did..
Friday, 27 June 2014
Forgotten Book - Night at the Mocking Widow
John Dickson Carr used the name Carter Dickson for the books he wrote about Sir Henry Merrivale, a detective whom some fans prefer to Dr Gideon Fell. Today's Forgotten Book, Night at the Mocking Widow, was published at the start of the Fifties but is set in an English village - with the excellent name Stoke Druid - in 1938. It's an English village mystery, and has a touch of nostalgia about it, as well as displaying Carr's love of England very clearly.
Stoke Druid is plagued by poison pen letters, and when one of those accused by the letters dies in tragic circumstances, the letters stop,only to start up again. The Mocking Widow (another great name) is a dominant stone in an ancient circle, and there is an "impossible situation" which does not actually involve a murder, with murder only taking place towards the end of the book. Stone circles have often featured in crime novels, and no wonder -they are so often spookily atmospheric.
I can't better the summary of this book to be found in Douglas Greene's biography of Carr, a book I regard as one of the best biographies of a detective novelist ever written. He is largely positive, though he recognises that the novel does not have the power and grip of Carr's best pre-war work. I thought that the ingredients were impressive and appealing, although I find the comedy associated with Merrivale much less appealing than do his biggest fans - for me, the Fell stories are on the whole markedly better.
I didn't guess the culprit in this one, but I felt this was in part due to the fact that the motivation is very thin. Carr made strenuous attempts, especially in the comic scenes, to compensate for the lack of a murder investigation from the outset, but by this time his powers were just beginning to fade. Perhaps the classic example of a village poison pen letter campaign is Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger. Even though that too is not one of her masterpieces, which perhaps explains why I've not mentioned it on this blog before, it is a smoothly accomplished whodunit and, to my way of thinking, clearly superior to Carr's effort. Overall verdict on this one- not bad, but unfortunately anti-climactic.
Stoke Druid is plagued by poison pen letters, and when one of those accused by the letters dies in tragic circumstances, the letters stop,only to start up again. The Mocking Widow (another great name) is a dominant stone in an ancient circle, and there is an "impossible situation" which does not actually involve a murder, with murder only taking place towards the end of the book. Stone circles have often featured in crime novels, and no wonder -they are so often spookily atmospheric.
I can't better the summary of this book to be found in Douglas Greene's biography of Carr, a book I regard as one of the best biographies of a detective novelist ever written. He is largely positive, though he recognises that the novel does not have the power and grip of Carr's best pre-war work. I thought that the ingredients were impressive and appealing, although I find the comedy associated with Merrivale much less appealing than do his biggest fans - for me, the Fell stories are on the whole markedly better.
I didn't guess the culprit in this one, but I felt this was in part due to the fact that the motivation is very thin. Carr made strenuous attempts, especially in the comic scenes, to compensate for the lack of a murder investigation from the outset, but by this time his powers were just beginning to fade. Perhaps the classic example of a village poison pen letter campaign is Agatha Christie's The Moving Finger. Even though that too is not one of her masterpieces, which perhaps explains why I've not mentioned it on this blog before, it is a smoothly accomplished whodunit and, to my way of thinking, clearly superior to Carr's effort. Overall verdict on this one- not bad, but unfortunately anti-climactic.
Friday, 29 March 2013
Forgotten Book - The White Priory Murders
Today's Forgotten Book, The White Priory Murders, first published in 1935, is an "impossible crime" mystery with a splendid basic premise. A famous actress's battered corpse is found in a country house pavilion, surrounded by snow that is unmarked by footprints, except for those of the man who, it seems, has found her body there. It's classic John Dickson Carr territory - or perhaps I should say classic Carter Dickson territory, for this and other stories with the same sleuth were published under that rather transparent alias.
More than one possible solution to that central puzzle is put forward, and it was characteristic of Carr's ingenuity that he excelled at coming up with multiple explanations for the cunning puzzles he devised. And it's that fascinating puzzle that constitutes the appeal of this book, for in some respects it's not (to my mind, anyway) anything like as good as his best work.
There are three reasons why this one seems to me to fall below Carr's highest standards. First, too much of the vital action is off-stage. One of the characters, the newspaper baron Lord Canifest, plays an important part in the plot,but I don't think we see enough of him, or of certain key incidents. Second, Sir Henry Merrivale, the usual Carter Dickson sleuth, is a rather cruder version of Gideon Fell, who stars in most of the best Carr books. Some Carr fans prefer Merrivale, because of the comedy in the books in which he appears, but for me,comic writing was far from Carr's greatest strength. His humour lacks the subtlety of his best plots..
Finally, what I love about the best Carr books is their macabre atmosphere. He is very good at making us suspend our disbelief, and he often does so by wrapping up the events of his story in a rich and sometimes dark blanket, that conceals some of the implausibilities of the story. Here, I found the characters and setting less gripping than those in his better books. So, not one of his best, but still worth a look because of the cleverness of the central problem.
More than one possible solution to that central puzzle is put forward, and it was characteristic of Carr's ingenuity that he excelled at coming up with multiple explanations for the cunning puzzles he devised. And it's that fascinating puzzle that constitutes the appeal of this book, for in some respects it's not (to my mind, anyway) anything like as good as his best work.
There are three reasons why this one seems to me to fall below Carr's highest standards. First, too much of the vital action is off-stage. One of the characters, the newspaper baron Lord Canifest, plays an important part in the plot,but I don't think we see enough of him, or of certain key incidents. Second, Sir Henry Merrivale, the usual Carter Dickson sleuth, is a rather cruder version of Gideon Fell, who stars in most of the best Carr books. Some Carr fans prefer Merrivale, because of the comedy in the books in which he appears, but for me,comic writing was far from Carr's greatest strength. His humour lacks the subtlety of his best plots..
Finally, what I love about the best Carr books is their macabre atmosphere. He is very good at making us suspend our disbelief, and he often does so by wrapping up the events of his story in a rich and sometimes dark blanket, that conceals some of the implausibilities of the story. Here, I found the characters and setting less gripping than those in his better books. So, not one of his best, but still worth a look because of the cleverness of the central problem.
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