On the third day of Bookgiving, my true love gave to me:
He Who Whispers, by John Dickson Carr.
He was the undisputed master of the locked room/impossible crime genre of mystery stories. His quality can be uneven at times, but when he is good, as in He Who Whispers, he is very good indeed.
There really wasn’t any good way to explain the murder. The victim was found dying on top of a lonely tower in France. He had been stabbed in the back. But witnesses were ready to swear that the victim was alone on that tower – and that nobody could possibly have gotten up to the top to stab him and then disappear. Unless, of course, you paid attention to those ugly rumors about vampires…and invisible creatures that could fly up the sheer walls of the tower in order to kill someone.
In his best books, Carr was able to build and maintain an atmosphere of sheer terror, and you'll find that on practically every page of He Who Whispers. For readers who have never encountered Carr before, this is an excellent place to start reading one of the grand masters of classic mystery fiction.
Many of Carr's works are out of print, but the Langtail Press has made He Who Whispers available both in a paperback edition
(If you came in late, here's what we're doing - I hope you'll join in!)
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