Explaining Miracles

In my opinion, John Dickson Carr was the absolute master of the locked room/impossible crime genre. With that in mind, may I make two recommendations.

The first is for what I still believe is the finest impossible crime story ever written: "The Three Coffins." As I have said before, Carr begins with a direct challenge to the reader - a challenge which says, "Watch me - I'm going to fool you," and then delivers on the challenge. It is scrupulously fair, but I suspect few readers will be up to the challenge, as the information you need to solve the murders is cleverly hidden behind some excellent atmospherics. And, as a bonus, the book contains Dr. Fell's marvelous locked room lecture, where the action is stopped while Dr. Fell lists all the ways in which impossible crimes may be carried out.

If you have read Carr before, you might also be interested in Douglas G. Greene's excellent biography, called "John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles." It's out of print, and copies seem to be pretty expensive, but it's worth checking with your local library to see if they have a copy of the book. Be forewarned that Greene's discussion of the plots of the novels will, of necessity, include some spoilers - with the reader warned ahead of time so he/she can ignore those paragraphs. But if you have read the stories, and want more insight into Carr and how he lived and worked, this is an excellent and very readable reference book.

Comments

[Yvette]

Les, I loved John Dickson Carr when I was in my twenties and thirties. Read all the Carr and Carter Dickson books I could get my hands on. LOVED Locked Room mysteries! (Loved Gideon Fell!) My favorite Carr book, I think, is SKULL ISLAND. In this one, I believe the detective was a Frenchman, Pierre Bencolin. I always thought that book would have made a great movie. I still do. The sad thing is I simply do not remember the rest of the books. I think I'm just going to have to start rereading him again one of these days. It's funny, I had that Carr bio home from the library but never got a chance to read it I was so busy reading other stuff. Oh well, I think I'd better try and get a used copy, this way it will be here when I feel like reading it.

I wrote a post about two books you'd recommended: THE MESSAGE OF THE MUTE DOG and THOU SHELL OF DEATH. Both arrived in the mail yesterday and I was anguished because I'm already reading something else...!

Hope you're having a great vacation, by the way.

[Doug Grewene]

Thanks, Les, for our kid remarks. Yvette, you are thinking about CASTLE SKULL whose detective is Henri Bencolin -- one of JDC's most atmospheric books.

Doug Greene

[Yvette]

Right, Les. That's what I meant: CASTLE SKULL. How could I forget? Henri Bencolin, yes. Even though my memory for names and titles is faulty, my memory of how much I enjoyed the book is not. ;)

[Les Blatt]

CASTLE SKULL was very early Carr - his second book, in fact. He only wrote 5 books about Bencolin. It's been a long time since I read that one; I think I'd better dig it out again.