The Architecture of Terror: The Curious case of John Dickson Carr’s Death Watch (1935) and the John Soane Museum – (Part 1)

Ah, what a joy to be back in the midst of Carrian plotting, atmosphere and cunning. In a brief hiatus on the blog to sort out some bits in what we call ‘life’, I have had some time to squeeze in a few marvelous mysteries. And now I am back in the blogging world with the first of a three-parter that I am giving over to another of Carr’s unexpected treasures, Death Watch.

Written in 1935 Death Watch sits between Plague Court and White Priory on one side, and straight after we have The Hollow Man and Red Widow. So Death Watch comes at pretty poignant time in Carr’s career, surrounded by such giants of his work.

I wanted to get to this book specifically after finding such a lovely Penguin copy (pictured above) in Black Gull books Camden on my second hand book walk. And also as Ben from the Green Capsule had peaked my interest when we recorded our Men Who Explain miracles mega-double-whammy podcast episode on the stages of Carr’s career.

To me Death Watch sits curiously in Carr’s ouvre and feels like we have been watching a master magician come off the stage after an amazing show, and then backstage proceed to show you some fresh, intimate, cutting edge tricks he has been working on. Tricks that he wouldn’t put in the main stage show, because they are a little out there and ahead of their time, but that pile on the ingenuity in fresh ways. If that makes sense?…. No? Let’s move on.

I’m going to take a different approach from the normal review. There are some great right ups in the bloggersphere (links at the bottom) if you are interested to see what Death Watch is all about. For this first post of three I’m going to talk about what I believe are a number of internal secrets that I have spotted in a second reading of Death Watch. In particular the use of architecture in the book, and more specifically the homage to one British architect, the great John Soane. Now before you yawn and close your laptop/phone screen stay with me. I propose that this singular relationship to John Soane and his now famous museum in central London, are like a secret backbone, weaved through the book that helps us to see the text in a new light. Let us begin.

The House that John Built.

John Soane (1753-1837) was a British architect most famous for designing the huge Bank of England building and Dulwich Picture gallery, the first art gallery in the world. He was the head of architecture at the Royal Academy and through his life he amassed a huge amount of sculptural, artistic and architectural artifacts which he displayed in a beautiful and intricately purpose built interior, which stretches across two houses, now open to the public and known as the John Soane Museum. If you’ve never been you have to go.

The Museum

One of the many winding interiors housing Soane’s collections

Why is this important? Well, Carr’s Death Watch is set almost entirely in a single, large house. This house is stated in chapter one as being number 16 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. The John Soane Museum is (in real life) situated at number 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Dr Melson, our young, tag along british side kick to Dr Fell in this case, makes direct reference to the museum in chapter one and the chapter is even called An Open Door in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Carr wanted us to notice this.

And there is more. Take for example, one of the first detailed descriptions as we enter the household of Johanus Carver, watch and clock maker of Death Watch. Notably, the staircase. This staircase will be heavily featured, playing vital roles in the tale, and is described by Carr with a beautifully sinister bite:

It was a prim stairway, with heavy banisters, dull-flowered carpet underfoot, and brass stair-rods; it was a symbol of solid English homes, where no violence can come, and did not creek as they mounted it.

It is also described in chapter three as being if a reddish flowered design carpet that runs into the corridors. Compare those descriptions with the main staircase in the John Soane museum (pictured below) and you’ll get where I am going with this.

The main staircase of the Soane Museum

Coincidence? Let’s continue. After this detail the most telling aspect for me is the room in which the victim is found splayed across the threshold. This room is described as being filled with dark wooden book shelves that cover the walls, Morris chairs, a deep leather couch and high backed Hepplewhite chairs. Look at John Soane’s living room and the similarities abound.

One half of the Soanes living room.

Hepplewhite chairs lined up at the back. They feature throughout the book.

At this stage you could say that this is Carr simply referencing or that many houses could have had these items. But Carr takes it a step further. Their is a notable difference in the living room of Soane and the room of Death Watch where we find our victim: the bookshelves are only shoulder height rather than ceiling height. This is because hung above them, Carr tells us that copies of the famous series of oil paintings The Rake’s Progress by the English painter William Hogarth. This is important. Famously the Soane house and new museum contains the entire original eight paintings of The Rake’s Progress in a purpose built room, and this for me is where the comparison gets really interesting.

‘A Rake’s Progress – The Orgy’ – Painting III

‘A Rake’s Progress – The Gaming House’ – Painting VI

Artworks feature heavily in Carr’s works, and by including The Rake’s Progress, Carr takes a step from visual and atmospheric inspiration, to using the structure and meaning of the Soane museum to drive the plot.

In fact I am proposing dear reader that Carr stood in the room of the John Soane Museum where The Rake’s Progress series is hung and the structure of Death Watch was built in his mind.

I say this for two reasons. Firstly The Rakes Progress, and how one encounters these paintings in within the architecture of the John Soane Museum, is essentially linked to the plot of Death Watch.

Secondly, and for me what makes this whole relationship between Soane and Carr so good, is that The Rakes Progress is a narrative set of paintings, a narrative that Carr uses as a bedrock for his characters in Death Watch. I can only say so much here, but the traditional character of the ‘Rake’ (or a ‘Rakehell) and his journey through the paintings is mirrored in a number of the characters and their journey through the plot of Death Watch. Carr’s book is a subtle but powerful nod of thanks to John Soanes, his home and his collection. Interesting right? (Well it’s been fun for me!)

More historical ‘movements’:

Here’s a few more little historical gems that reveal themselves:

The titular ‘Death Watch’ of the book is taken, as Carr states in his very tongue in cheek prologue, from a description he saw in a clock makers reference book: F.J.Britten’s Old Clocks and Watches and their Makers, published in 1932, probably just as he was writing Death Watch. I have since found that book and here are the illustrations of the ‘Death Watch’ itself.

These watches known as Memento Mori watches were made by a mysterious French watch maker known only as ‘Moyse’. The one used in Death Watch was owned by Mary Queen of Scotts, and the same narrative runs in Carr’s story. In real life the watch was given to one of Queen Mary’s ladies in waiting, Mary Seton. The name Seton will jump out to many Carr obsessives, as being the surname of one of Carr’s most vital career characters, Fay Seton from He Who Whispers.

That book is set in a small fictional french town near Chartris, very similar to the french town of Reims where Mary Seton finished her days as a nun, and where the watch was discovered. (I could be reading into things here too much but I’m enjoying myself dammit!)

– Soane had many clocks in his collection, spread out in different rooms, and a number of clocks and the way they are shown in Death Watch match those in the Soane collection.

– In the third painting of The Rake’s Progress, Tom ‘the Rake’ is having his watch stolen by a women at a fancy party. The opening crime in Death Watch is a unsolved murder in which a woman has killed a man and stole a famous watch.

– The pub at which many of the cast of Death Watch hang out is called the Dutchess of Portsmouth. This pub doesn’t exist but the next road on from Lincoln’s Inn Fields is Portsmouth Road, named after Dutchess of Portsmouth, one of Charles the II’s mistresses.

– Charles the II housed the Dutchess in a property on the corner of what is now Portsmouth Road, this house subsequently became famous for being the so called ‘Curiosity Shop’ that features in Charles Dickens famous work Master Humphries Clock, which, wait for it, is a bout a story teller who keeps his manuscripts locked inside an ancient clock. Clocks, watches, time pieces, they are everywhere!

Times running out!

Okay okay, I’m possibly overstating my findings here. But what I love about all these links I am drawing out, is being given what I feel like is a secret window into the mind of the master himself. Where Carr found his inspiration has always been an interest to me as his ideas and settings were so diverse. Here we can imagine him at the John Soane house, surrounded my incredible artifacts, architecture and paintings and the cogs start turning as plot lines and impossible mechanisms fall into place like the beautiful structure of a rare skull-watch.

See you in part two.

From other bloggers:

Ben at – The Green Capsule

JJ at – The Invisible Event

Kate at – Cross Examining Crime

Part 2 – Banner Deadlines – The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner: Joseph Commings (1947-84)

Right. Let’s get back to the inimitable Brooks U. Banner and his impossible escapades. Part one kicked us off with the first half of Commings selected short impossible works, and in this post, I’ll wrap up the collection and drop in a little reflection on the closing piece from another master of the impossible crime, Ed Hoch.

You can read my intro to Commings, his writing practice and the creation of Banner in part one, so, for now, we’ll get straight into it. (And it’s worth noting that the dates given here are taken from the collection and represent the date of publication not the date of writing. I imagine it’s difficult to find out when some of these were written vs the time they were actually able to be printed. So, just to be clear Commings wasn’t writing from beyond the grave in 2004:

Murderers’ Progress (1960) – ★★1/2
A doozy (yes I said doozy) of a setup, in which Banner is tasked by five friends from his secret magic club to solve five impossible ‘murders’ given to him in five envelopes. All in good fun, of course, that is until the murders turn real and Banner needs to pull the strands together quick. A rich tapestry is woven here at the early stages, and Commings makes what should be a ludicrous set up seem totally natural. And the idea of one of the five taking the chance to actually kill others through the game is brilliant and would have made a wonderful novel if Commings has decided to go for it. The problem is that as soon as the murder is there, we don’t see or hear any more of these five crimes and it all falls a bit flat. The impossible set up is great, but in the end very see-through. It relies on an annoying moment which stretches fair play (which was drawn to my attention on Christian’s review), and the solution itself stretches things and will divide rooms I’m sure. In fact this story deserves a bigger discussion about how ludicrous a locked room solution can be, and how context needs to frame extremely well to make something ludicrous seems reasonable, but I digress.

Castanets, Canaries and Murder (1962) – ★★★★
A man is stabbed in the back in a TV studio. He is shooting a scene for an up and coming famous film and the entire event is caught on camera, with the whole stage set in shot. But when the footage is examined no one is seen to come near the man. This story has mixed opinions but I found myself drawn into it (although this has some of the more troubling views of the time). There is a funny thing here that I possibly enjoyed this story more for the fact that I could see what the solution would before it came.  There is a technical aspect to the method which I was aware of (aware of it generally, not in regards to this book), which meant that I found it all rather clever. 

The X Street Murders (1962) – ★★★
A package is delivered to an office building in –. When the receptionist takes the package into the office of her boss two gunshots ring out. The man is killed, and when the package is opened it contains the still smoking gun that fired the bullets. The package, however, had not been punctured, and the woman was witnessed speaking to her boss by two others. This is Commings most famous story, and you can see why what a cracking set up! I read this one early on in my locked room endeavors – as it’s pretty much the only one that gets a re-print – and in my memory, it shone very brightly. On second read I wasn’t as enamored. It’s pretty convoluted, and some aspects are not as clean as they could be (certain requirements here and there to make things work), and it does leave you asking why anyone would go to all the trouble. But still a classic, and with some of Commings’ most memorable characters. 

Hangmans House (1962) – ★★
Banner is stranded in a freak rainstorm and ends up boarding a little bus carrying a few others caught in the rain. The bus fails and they have to pull into an old worn down mansion house, which happens to be owned by one of the other passengers. Madness ensues and that man is soon found dead, hung from the chandelier in the middle of a vast ballroom. A ballroom completely covered in dust with no footprints anywhere to be found. This one is… how to I describe it? Pretty mad? Ridiculous? I can hear Gervase Fen cursing me for damning the use of ‘coincidence’, but it’s too liberal here. And then the solution, I’m battling with it. I read another short not long ago by a Japanese author who used a similar idea, but it worked better because it was an accident. Whereas here, again, there just isn’t a point to the level of work needed to pull this off. This is a story that struggles simply because the impossibility is not contextualised. 

The Giants Sword (1963) – ★★★★
This is just solid stuff. Simple, effective, while keeping firmly in the camp of original and fun. An art dealer found to be selling fake works is found dead in his office, with a sword plunged deep into his chest. The only issue is that the sword is so heavy and so large that no one barely had the strength to pick the thing up let alone drive it so deeply into the victim. There are echoes of Chesterton’s The Hammer of God here, but the solution veers in a different direction and is pretty satisfying. Enjoy 

Stairway to Nowhere (1979) – ★★
This one is unique in the collection as it’s a collaborative piece written by Commings and another locked room master Ed Hoch. I had high hopes for this one with having both these writers behind the wheel, and Commings and Hoch being such good friends. A woman walks into an apartment to get away from the man who has been pestering her all night. The man outside hears her go up the steps inside, but then her footsteps abruptly stop. He runs in after and she is not to found anywhere, and there is a reliable witness at the top of the winding case that says no one came up. Unfortunately, I thought this story was really awful. Funnily enough, the writing style was so much different with Hoch in, but not for the better, and I felt the solution to the impossibility, although very clean and simple in the idea wasn’t fairly clued, and therefore lost its impact for me. In essence one of those great ideas, not followed through. Christian thinks a little differently about this one, so for a more balanced opinion check out his write up as well. 

The Vampire in the Iron Mask (1984) – ★★1/2
It probably speaks volumes to the type of story this is that I can hardly remember what happened. One too many ideas here that everything is a bit muddled. This one should have been a novel really, and you can see Carr doing wonders with it. The general set up, however, is enticing. A masked vampire strangles a young boy in a cemetery covered in untouched snow. The only footprints are leading to the body and back from a mausoleum that has been locked for 100’s of years. When the door is broken down written in the dust of the coffin is the word vampire, even though the dust all around is unbroken (and that’s just two of the many problems presented in this one!) I wish the letters on the coffin had a better solution as I love that as a unique problem. 

The Whispering Gallery (2004) ★★★★★
And then Commings brings the heat for the final story of the collection with a tale of multiple impossible shootings, in that each time the bullet whole is examined it is shown that the gunman must have been upside down floating in midair while firing the shot. The slow, creeping setup, the macabre setting, and cast (complete with fortune teller) and the absolute audacity if the solution is another room divider but I enjoyed it. The solution is also very nicely and interestingly clued, and visual device of which is used in one of my favorite Jonathan Creek episodes. 

Afterword:
The collection ends with a sweet and poignant memoir written by Commings close friend and locked room master Ed Hoch. It reveals post-war how Commings was developing a locked room mystery collection and Hoch submitted a story to it and this would have been Hoch’s first ever sale. Unfortunately, the collection was rejected and this seemed to become a theme for Commings, not because of bad writing but for some reason a few key publishers had taken a disliking to the Banner character. Commings could never get into Ellery Queen’s mystery magazine, and very interestingly in Hoch’s landmark anthology All But Impossible, which contains the famous locked room top 15 list of which myself and JJ concentrated three podcast episodes on, originally had a Commings short story, but it was the only one rejected by the publisher. Hoch states that Commings was very ill by this point and so never told him that it had been dropped.

To everyone’s surprise, Commings then went on to produce a series of soft-core sex novels in the ’60s and ’70s (one of which had a bank robbery but which Hoch tells us ‘wasn’t primarily a crime novel’… I bet it wasn’t!). If there were tensions around printing the Banner stories my guess is that they may have been around Banner’s old-time sexist chatter, which may be revealing itself further in these erotic novels? But sexism and eroticism in literature don’t necessarily go hand in hand, and the rest of the stuff getting printed by these magazines wasn’t really any better, so who knows?

A stroke in 1971 meant that his writing days were done, and at this point, Hoch managed to sell their collaborative effort Stairway to Heaven to Mike Shaine’s Mystery Magazine, who then ironically asked for more unpublished Banner works and they continued to print them. In 1992 Commings passed away.

This is a precious little collection and a great piece of work from Crippen and Landru. There is so much to love here and to simply enjoy. If you have the same luck I had and find a copy, grab it as quick as you can.

The Men Who Explain Miracles – Episode 8:1 -The Impossible Crimes of Paul Halter

We are back with another episode of TMWEM and very excited for this two parter. Myself and JJ of The Invisible Event are looking at the modern locked room aficionado Paul Halter. As I have read none of Halter’s work, JJ is going to try and convince me over these two episodes get to get stuck in.

In this episode we discuss who on earth Paul Halter is, what he does and where he is placed in the world of all things impossible.

You can listen to the episode here on JJ’s blog

As ever the comments section is open for debate and furious discussion, so pop over and join us. Enjoy!

The White Priory Murders: Carter Dickson (1934) – Does having an authors entire career before you make reading ‘un-fair-play’?

I continue with my current John Dickson Carr (Carter Dickson) binge, and I have come to the conclusion that I officially love being told that a work by Carr is sub standard. Because every time I then seem to love the book!

I was told Graveyard to Let wasn’t worth a huge amount of time, and now it’s one of my top locked room works. This also goes for The Problem of the Wire Cage, and Nine and Death Makes Ten. It seems that many of us on the bloggersphere over the last few years have had similar experiences with Carr, and that the works always seen as the top tier are being replaced somewhat by ‘lesser’ titles.

I’m not a fool though. I realise that Patrick Butler for the Defense, when I get round to it, is never going to be a surprise smash hit (although there must be good elements to it right? Somewhere?), and Blind Barber was never going to get any easier to read even with the four month break I took at the half way point. And if Ben’s recent review of Papa La Bas is anything to go by, I haven’t got much to look forward to there. However these books are talked about as simply and objectively bad. But these aside, many of Carr’s works are discussed as if they are missing something, or that they don’t compare to the heights achieved in his ‘masterpieces’. This in recent years has lowered my expectation of certain Carr books, only to have these works unexpectedly reveal something wonderful.

This has got me thinking: when we have an authors entire oeuvre in front of us, does that make reading their works a fair process?

As an example I’m looking at the The White Priory Murders, an early Carr novel and one of his first impossible crime works. In reading about this the main opinion seems to be that it’s a brilliant locked room with an amazing solution trapped in a sensationalist and dragging story. So I was geared up for that. I had held off till I had a bit more time, and at 250 pages it’s one Carr’s longer ones. I was ready for a real wrestle just to get to the solution. But, I ended up having the reverse experience.

It felt to me that each scene made sense being there, characters or dialogue didn’t seem superfluous, and even with the extended page count, each piece fitted together in a gorgeous plot with simple but shocking turns over the chapters that it kept me going at high pace. The glamorous Hollywood Movie Star Marcia Tait has traveled to England to make a new film. Staying at the gorgeous White Priory, she insists on sleeping the night in the Pavilion. A building set in the middle of a huge lake, with only one footpath to reach it. The lake is frozen solid. Both the ice and the path are covered with fresh snow after Tait goes in for the night, and it’s proved that no one went in with her. However early morning comes and Tait is found beaten to death, with no footprints left in the snow. The cast surrounding Tait, her agent, lover, play write and all the other trappings of fame, all wanted to control her, but was she playing a roll or was she the one in control?

A great set up and I couldn’t wait to get to the solution. I had heard it was highly original and a real kicker. But alas it was ruined for me. Another lesser author had stolen the solution for another work, and done it so much worse, which meant that I was onto it from early on. But Carr does it so so well, and the misdirection and the clicking of pieces together by the end is luscious. How the dog keeps coming into play is a particular favourite, and there are large amounts of false solutions and ideas presented. It felt as if Carr at this early stage of locked room writing was saying, “I see your no-footprints solution and I raise you 3 more solutions, all of which are false.”

Seeing the solution coming in the distance was another reason why I had a reverse experience with this book. I wasn’t plowing to get to the end and although many say that the middle drags, I was waiting for that moment but didn’t find it myself. Maybe I was in a good mood, and I’ve got it wrong, I’m not sure. There are certainly some sensationalist parts to this book, some misogyny, and some early Carr verbosity (but not to the level of It Walks By Night), but Carr is dealing with the world of Hollywood meats British academia which in itself is a pretty farcical setup. And he lets the caricatures have their day. Carr also knowingly subverts this; Merrivale making a few comments on how people are talking ‘as if they are in a stupid detective play’, so maybe this is the early stages of his subversion that we would see in the more post-modern breakdowns in the likes of The Hollow Man. With that in mind lets head back to the question of Oeuvre .

I have spoken in mine and JJ’s locked room podcast about how strange it is that we are almost always looking back when reading classic GAD. We are looking back on authors’ entire bodies of work in one go, it’s a unique experience. But being able to stand back from an entire life’s work can have negative effects on how certain works are seen. It is much easier for works to become unfairly mythologised (Hollow Man / Murder of Roger Ackroyd) and become supposedly representative of what the writer was trying to achieve in their entire writing career. My feeling is that by not being there at the time of the release of a book, we miss something about what the writer was trying to achieve in that one work at that time, and not over a whole career.

In a funny way I had built a strange anxiety about reading Carr, in that I wanted each one I read to be ‘the one’. The one I could give to people to draw them into GAD, the one that would be representative of his career, and of the ‘master of the locked room’. But I think sometimes these mythologised titles we give to GAD authors and the context of the ‘masterpieces’ they achieved, is unhelpful in approaching their work. We can miss what gems there are in each work by unfairly laboring them with what is to come.

When myself JJ and Ben did our podcast two-parter on the Ages of John Dickson Carr it opened my eyes to see his work in a totally fresh way. I have stopped trying to look at Carr as a locked room master but as an experimental crime, supernatural and suspense author, who was trying out new things with each work and constantly stretching and challenging the boundaries of his genre.

But in saying all this, I know that as I read these lesser known works I can enjoy a ‘substandard’ Carr more because I know that he wrote even better. I can see the light shimmering in the cracks knowing what is to come. So maybe then it’s not a struggle with contextualising an author in terms of their career but maybe a false contextualising that makes you think that a writer had a certain type of writing focus that they actually didn’t, and therefore reading their books in that context isn’t entirely fair-play to them?

This may come under the huge mental subheading of ‘things that only I think are interesting’ but I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Speak soon friends

The Men Who Explain Miracles – Episode 7: part 2 -The Ages of John Dickson Carr

Part 2 is of our most recent podcast looking at John Dickson Carr’s incredible output of works is now up and ready for your listening ears! For the second round, myself and fellow bloggers JJ and Ben, take on the second half of Carr’s career finishing up with a few indulgent chats about favourites from his oeuvre. Enjoy, and as ever do get involved in the comments and discussion.

You can listen and find all our other episodes right here over at JJ’s blog

 

The Men Who Explain Miracles – Episode 7: part 1 -The Ages of John Dickson Carr

It is as always, with great joy, that I announce that myself and fellow blogger JJ have the next episode of our locked room mystery podcast online. This one is going to be a two parter over the two weekends, and has been one of my favourites to make. Not just because we are discussing the career of the wonderful John Dickson Carr in detail, but because the facilitator of our conversation is a very exciting special guest and a good friend. But… no spoilers about that! You can listen to the episode here over at JJ’s blog. Enjoy, and as ever join us in the comments section for discussion and debate.

 

 

How a Solution Becomes a Story – The Curse of the Bronze Lamp: Carter Dickson (1945)

A stone cold classic set-up for a stone cold classic work from Carter Dickson, aka John Dickson Carr. Clearly inspired by the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, the story centres around an ancient Egyptian lamp bearing a curse: anyone who tries to take it out of Egypt will be ‘blown to dust’.

Love this old 1950s hand painted cover from Pan-books

This threat is made to the young Lady Helen Loring, a fiery, hyper-intelligent woman travelling back from Egypt to England after a 1930s, world famous archeological dig. Helen is told that she will not make it home to her room, and that before she arrives she will dematerialise.

Helen is seen walking into her house by two witnesses, the bronze lamp in hand, ready to prove the curse wrong. Someone on the inside hears her arrive, her footsteps making echoes on the flagstones of the lobby. But the footsteps suddenly stop, the sound disappearing. Two others arrive in the lobby seconds later to find the bronze lamp laying on the floor and no sign of Helen. There are no hiding places in the house (we are repeatedly shown) and every single exit – whether window or door – was watched, there being many hired hands working on the grounds of the house at the time.

A really unique set up – and, it was great to read a disappearance / dematerialisation / impossible set up from Carr. In a dedication written by Carr to Ellery Queen at the beginning of the book, this ‘miracle-problem’ of a person vanishing is, in his own words, ‘perhaps the most fascinating gambit in detective fiction’. He then goes on to say ‘I will do no more than make cryptic reference to Mr James Phillimore and his Umbrella. You have been warned.’ A gorgeous and enticing dedication, and fans of Sherlock Holmes may know that this character of Mr James Phillimore of whom Carr refers, is taken from a line by Dr John Watson in the Sherlock Holmes story, The Problem of Thor Bridge. On talking about cases in his overflowing files that he has not yet the time to write up he states:

‘Among these unfinished tales is that of Mr James Phillimore, who, stepping back into his own house to get his umbrella, was never more seen in this world.’

There are mixed opinions about this book, but I enjoyed it a lot. It seems that it is simply Carr enjoying himself, playing with ideas and characters and having fun with them, at a solid time in his career. Either side of this book we see top rating novels like Till Death do Us Part, He Wouldn’t Kill Patience and He Who Whispers, arguably some of his greatest works. He was certainly in his stride, and although this book doesn’t have the pace, terror or complexities of plotting that these surrounding books have, you can see and feel he his enjoying the exploration of this (at the time I guess) very current subject matter, and the myths surrounding it, while also dedicating a huge amount of time to observing the snapping nerves of the characters as the days go by and Helen isn’t found.

And the solution to the disappearance? How did I feel about it? Well… to be honest I was unsure… At first. But, as things moved on and more elements slotted into place, the plot tightening to it’s extreme, I grew to love it. Those final three chapters served to take the single line that untangled the mystery and expand it into new regions of thought and forehead slapping.

And this got me thinking. I kind of knew this subconsciously, but hadn’t thought enough about it – namely, that the solution in a mystery novel is not just an answer, but is itself a narrative tool and piece of plotting. In a funny a way I had thought that the plot ended at the beginning of the ‘reveal’ and then from there it was the solution until the end, which unravelled the ‘plot’, a separate, distinct element from the solution. But when you look at a writer as good as John Dickson Carr, you realise that this is not the case.

Carr, and many other brilliant writers, use the solution itself as a plotting tool. They pace the solution out to reveal things at just the right moment for the reader, to be the most impactful and meaningful, and they vary these solutions as much as the mysteries they set out at the start.

Take for example the last few chapters of Nine and Death Makes Ten. The solution absolutely blows your mind for how much it reveals to you that you missed, and actually strengthens everything preceeding, re-contextualising all of it. Another stone cold classic Carr The Crooked Hinge has simply a four word reveal to blast open everything. But when you first read them, they seemingly make absolutely no sense, as it takes the whole mystery and all that you think you understand in to a completely different direction. As these four words are expanded in the final chapters the horror and instability that unfolds is wonderful, which reinforces the macabre nature of the story built by the mystery up till that point. It’s in these kind of examples that Carr has incredible fun with the steady revealing and piecing together of the solution, in many cases still misdirecting you and throwing you read herrings even as he reveals what has occurred.

Of course there are many works that subvert the whole idea of the solution, or where the entire plot is a solution, or multiple solutions as with The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkley. But in this instance I am talking about the more ‘traditional’ mystery set up, with a solution that shifts all that you have just read.

Maybe that’s what a solution is, a ‘re-contextualising’ of everything that has come before. A piece of plotting that shifts all previous plotting into a new lens of viewing. Maybe this is obvious to everyone but me, but I find that my appreciation of these works has grown, thinking about how a writer uses a reveal as a narrative tool. A tool not exclusive to mystery fiction, but pushed to it’s limits by the genre.

And often, as I am taken slowly through the reveal by the author, I grow to love the solution even more.

So tell me friends, what works have some of your favourite and uniquely written reveals? And keep it spoiler free!

The Men Who Explain Miracles – Episode 6: We interview Martin Edwards at the British Library!

Well this is very exciting friends! It is with a great amount of joy that I announce that myself and fellow blogger JJ have the next episode of our locked room mystery podcast online, and this month we had the opportunity to interview the author, editor and encyclopaedic GAD mind of Martin Edwards! You can listen to the episode right here at JJ’s blog The Invisible Event.

After this years wonderful Bodies From The Library conference at the British Library, we caught up with Martin to talk about his favourite locked room mysteries, his work on bringing forgotten locked room stories back to life and what he thinks makes a great impossible crime.

Thanks again to Martin for giving his time, and to Abbie and Rob from the publishing team at the British Library for giving us space to record this episode (and staying late to allow us to do so!), and of course for all their work on the whole Crime Classics series, which has done so much to bring golden age Detective stories back into the hands of readers.

Enjoy and do join in the comments and discussion over at JJ’s place!

Reflections on parody in detective fiction – Case for Three Detectives: Leo Bruce (1936)

Well this has been a long time coming! This little gem has been burning a hole on my bookshelf since I found this gorgeous, beaten up penguin edition in a second hand bookshop at the beginning of the year.

In the most recent episodes of our locked room mysteries podcast The Men Who Explain Miracles, myself and fellow blogger JJ discussed our top 15 locked room novels and Leo Bruce’s Case for Three Detectives this was on JJ’s list. That inspired me to finally get to it and I’ll tell you now that I was not let down one bit. The story:

After a night of hearty food, drink and rather preeminent discussions about committing and solving murder, the ever genteel, and ever rich Mary Thurston leaves her house guests to go to bed. A short times passes and screams are heard coming from her bedroom. Everyone in the house darts to her door from different angles. It is double locked on the inside with two sliding bolts, and once a panel of wood is smashed through the bolts are slid back (by a reliable person I may add) and the crowd rush in. They find a hideous sight of deep, blood soaked pillows and bed sheets, Mary lies with her throat slit. One of the crowd runs to the only other opening in the room, the window, and slides it open. No one to be seen. There are no footprints in the flower bead beneath, the other windows are too far away to climb to, and there was no way that anyone could have got out in time without being witnessed by the others.

In all aspects then, an absolutely classic locked room set up, and this is the point. For the book from here on will be a wonderful comedic parody and critique of classic detective story set ups, their characters and their mechanics.

The theme of parody begins the next day when three investigators, seemingly from nowhere, have appeared in the house. Each of these characters is a larger than life version of a famous fictional detective. Characters that would have been hugely popular and known at the time, even as they are now.

First we meet Lord Simon Plimsol, a parody of Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey. He is stiflingly and hilariously upper class, groaning at beer, sickened by bad decor and having never heard of a strange game called ‘darts’. Secondly we meet the inimitable Monsieur Amer Pecon, which you probably already guessed from the name is our parody of Hercule Poirot, created by Agatha Christie. Amer Picon is an absolutely wonderful name for this character as Amer Picon is the name of a sweet french aperitif, which in many ways sums up Poirot 100%. Picon is uncontrollably french, and wipes off and organises dust at every possible opportunity. Finally we meet Monsignor Smith, a little catholic priest of seemingly no significance. Smith is of course our Father Brown, G.K.Chesterton’s marvellous series creation, and the parody here is wonderful. Smith speaks only in verbose parables and idioms which at times are totally unfathomable. Each sentence is an opportunity for reflection upon humanity and spirituality, and most of the time he seems totally uninterested or is simply asleep during proceedings.

And then of course we have our um… hero, of sorts, the plodding, East Londoner Sergeant Beef. Bain of the local police force, avid darts player and beer drinker, friend to all, but seemingly dunderheaded when it comes to the art of detection.

Once we have met our investigators things start to get very interesting in terms of form. You are aware that with these three famous detectives on the case that you are going to get three different solutions from them. But of course, you are also aware, with the format of the story, and with the presence of Beef from the off, that they are going to be ultimately wrong. Beef says from the first few pages of his appearance that he has already worked it out, but being non charismatic and of the group of simpletons known as the police force, he is constantly told to be quiet or pushed aside.

The fact then that you know that these three detectives are going to be wrong, but not knowing quite how much or why, gives you a very unique, and ‘meta’ reading experience. Instead of trying to keep up in the race with them to the solution, you are instead in a place of critique, trying to see what is incorrect about their deductions rather than what might be leading to the truth. Knowing the end before you start, but not knowing it’s shape puts you in this strange premonitory relationship in regards to the characters. And of course, even though Sergeant Beef keeps getting cut off, when he does get a word in edge ways, it is pregnant with even more significance. But exactly how much people are wrong, and in what way leaves you second guessing yourself.

At the same time, we are aware that we are actually going to get three different solutions from these eccentric investigators, so we are also trying to work out what on earth will be their perspective. And their perspectives in the end are not some weak or comedic piece of detection, but each solution is strong, believable and high quality, and then comes Beef to blow them all away. What is amazing about this is that Bruce had to come up with four different solutions to a locked room problem in one novel, with multiple murderers, motives and clues, all of which were believable and credible. No small task.

But the intelligence of this book doesn’t end here. Not only are the characters parodied, but their detection styles also. Lord Plimsol focuses on details gained through conversation and amiability, Picon looks at ‘matters of the heart’ in his search for truth, and Monsignor Smith ties up his case looking at the spiritual and moral angle.

Bruce then takes this a step further by giving the three detectives solutions that as well as being totally credible and succinct, are parodies of the types of solutions their authors would give them. What really impressed me thinking about the plot at the book’s climax was that Bruce also builds parody into the way that the other characters react to these detectives. Lord Plimsol is deeply admired and respected at all times, Picon draws out everyones emotional secrets and they all confide in him, Smith is ignored and seen as of little consequence until things start to get supernatural. And Beef is seen as the blithering policeman, a classic trope of detective fiction. And Bruce even takes this a step further, in that these parodied responses from the cast are not just a simple send up of the author he is referencing, but they are also pieces of genuine clueing.

How the whole piece rounds up, particularly with Beef’s solution and how he responds to the three other theories is marvellously charming.

My criticisms? When the only strong female character is killed it leaves a super male heavy cast, some of which do blur together because they are so similar. This is frustrating as Bruce was obviously a brilliant writer and creator of character so he could have done a lot more with broadening his cast. But maybe this is parody too? I would also have liked to have seen more of Monsignor Smith. Of course his quiet presence is meant to reflect Father Brown’s, but he is often left a bit till last.

All in all a winner, and I can’t wait to get to the rest of Bruce’s oeuvre.

The Short Stories of Edmund Crispin – Part 2: The Later Works

Back to Crispin’s ingenious and oft-neglected short stories. Last time I looked at Crispin’s early short works and this week I will look at the collecting in Fen Country, which spans the later period of his writing from 1952-1979.

Love these 70’s covers with the painstaking composition or real objects. Including in this case a stuffed cats claw.

A tiny acknowledgements page at the back tells us that Fen Country is compiled of three different collections. Firstly, many of the 26 stories on offer are from the period between 1950 and 1955 where Crispin was writing stories for the London Evening Standard (oh, to have this back again!). Two stories are taken from editions of Ellery Queens Mystery magazine, and two are taken from a collection called Winter’s Crimes, a series that I have heard a little about but would appreciate more info from those in the know. The first volume is on sale on ebay currently at £103, so it’s a rarity now?

As with Beware Of The Trains each story takes one simple problem, or one very clever and specific idea and uses that as a fulcrum for the tale. I was told by my good friend JJ of The Invisible Event  said he felt that the stories here in Fen Country didn’t contain as good plotting, but the ideas were amazing. And that is a really good way to describe it. The shockingly rigorous plotting of Beware of the Trains is not at play here, but it seems like Crispin was having a huge amount of fun, and being much bolder in experimenting, with the central concept used for each tale. There is a focus on the modernist, meta experimentations that Crispin was so good at with his novels, but pushing them to the limit. One story plays with the idea that Crispin himself is the main characters, and plays with your expectations in the reader/author relationship.

Here are my tops tales from the collection:

Who Killed Baker – (1950)
Simply a genius piece of work. This is the first in the collection and kicks things off so well as it shows where Crispin had got to in terms of manipulating the form and subverting the form. Crispin was clearly having a lot of fun here, and I’m sure this story might ruffle a few feathers. I can’t say too much more but the whole piece revolves around the simple statement ‘Who Killed Baker?’ (Geoffrey Bush?)

The Hunchback Back Cat – (1954)
‘Were ALL superstitious… whether we realise it or not. Let me give you a test’. This is Gervase Fen’s opening gambit in a story that again could have made a full novel with all that is crammed into it. It tells the story of the Copping family, a family who, due to parricidal tendencies and tragedies, there are only two left of. The murder of one of them in a locked tower (very reminiscent in description of the room in Jonathan Creek’s The Grinning Man), leads to a wonderful set of double and triple bluffs that I never saw coming. How the superstitious angle closes the case is extremely clever.

A Case in Camera – (1955)
Detective Inspector Humbleby, Crispin’s series detective inspector in the Gervase Fen stories, is keeping a case open against his superior’s wishes. His intuition has convinced him, for the moment, that the suspects statements are a little too consistent. Their alibi rests on a single photograph which places them elsewhere at the time of a brutal murder. How Fen catches them out is such a lovely idea, and again feels like one of those simple happenings that Crispin saw or experienced in day to day life, and sculpted it to be a tale of crime. This type of writing feels very Carrian, and as I have mentioned elsewhere Crispin was inspired to take up the mystery field after reading Carr.

The Pencil – (1953)
When discussing this collection with fellow blogger JJ, this was the story that came to mind for him, and it’s no surprise. Spy thriller in style, The Pencil opens with a contract killer, known only as Elliot, being kidnapped by two assailants, all of which he know would happen and so has planned accordingly.  It has an absolute kicker of an ending and in four pages does more than some novels manage to do!

Death Behind Bars – (1960)
A longer, non series piece, Murder Behind Bars considers how a man being held on suspicion of murder is killed in his locked cell. There is no way of approaching the cell in the time specified, and the murder weapon is no where to be found. Although in ,many ways you can see the solution coming, I really loved it, and it has been used a lot since (and maybe was before). I even saw it in a recent episode of The Dr Blake mysteries even though it wasn’t a locked room scenario. And the motives are especially well spun in this one. But what makes this story even more brilliant is the form that the piece takes, and how that brings everything home to you as the reader, but I’ll let you experience that for yourself.

We Know You’re Busy Writing, But We Thought You Wouldn’t Mind If We Just Dropped in for a Minute – (1969) 
A deliciously dark story, clearly based on the frustrations that Crispin experienced being a writer. The setting is a small, isolated cottage in Devon which is exactly where Crispin lived and worked. The story tells us of one Mr Bradley a writer of adventure stories who has a deadline to meet, but keeps receiving endless interruptions of all kinds at his lonely cottage. The characters here are superb, and the way that Bradley desperately tries to remember the line he was writing as he is interrupted is hilarious. The closing line however, is one of the most chilling you’ll read in a short mystery.

Those are my top stories. I highly recommend this collection. Although they are a mixed bag, I think much of this was down to restrictions in time and word count, especially for the Evening Standard pieces. This struggle for deadlines is something that Crispin showed in full in ‘We Know You’re Busy Writing…’, maybe it was a confessional piece of sorts? If you see this on your travels pick it up!