I've been meaning to write a followup post this week, recommending other titles by John Dickson Carr to go along with this week's review of "The Case of the Constant Suicides." The problem is - there are so many good books by this master of the locked room/impossible crime genre - and yet so few of them now in print - that it's not easy to make recommendations.
As I've written many times before, my favorite Carr is still "The Three Coffins," published in England as "The Hollow Man." It remains out of print, but there seem to be a fair number of used copies still on the market, and any good mystery bookseller should be able to help you.
The Rue Morgue Press has republished Carr's "The Crooked Hinge." It's another very good one, although I find the solution a bit implausible. But then it's easy to make that criticism of most locked room/impossible crime mysteries. As with most good magic tricks (for these books deal largely in illusion), when you know how it's done, the urge to say "Is that all?" becomes almost irresistable.
Don't forget that Carr also wrote under the name of Carter Dickson - he wrote his series featuring the irascible Sir Henry Merrivale under that name. One of the best of those - "The Judas Window" - is still in print, and it's an excellent mystery.
For a broader overview - and to get an idea of what may be available - you can check out Amazon's author pages for John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson
. Some titles are weaker than others, to be sure, but there are only a few real howlers. And let me recommend again Doug Greene's marvelous biography of Carr, John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles
- if you really want to learn about his life and his writing, this book is indispensable.
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