15 John Dickson Carr mysteries for your reading pleasure

A sequel to the previous post. Here is a listing + tentative ranking of the John Dickson Carr novels I have read so far (around 10 of these in the last two months alone). Many of these I thought brilliant, and none of them has been a clunker. (There have been times when I was underwhelmed by the solution, or thought Carr had gone too far down the rabbit-hole of the overly convoluted or improbable plot – but even in those cases the quality of the writing and the setting up of the puzzle was entertaining enough that the book as a whole worked for me.)

Category 1: my absolute favourites so far. Up there with the best Agatha Christies or who-have-you.

– He Who Whispers (wrote a bit about it here)

 – The Black Spectacles, a.k.a. The Problem of the Green Capsule

 – She Died a Lady (Unlike many Carr fans whose reviews I have read online, I enjoyed the passages of slapstick comedy in this one, including a scene where Sir Henry Merrivale, rattling along noisily in a wheelchair, stirs up the unwelcome attention of every dog in the village centre. I’m surprised that many devoted Carr fans turn their noses up at such humour, especially since it so often balances the darker aspects of a story.)

– The Burning Court (This is one of JDC’s most discussed novels, and among his most divisive… mainly because of a four-page epilogue which seems to not only overturn a perfectly satisfying denouement but also takes the book into territory that is discomfiting for many fans of “fair-play detective fiction”. I loved it, though, and I think the ending can be interpreted in two – if not three – different ways, all of which can work for the open-minded reader.)

– The Four False Weapons (One of those mysteries where, as new revelations and red herrings keep turning up in the book’s final third, you have to laugh out loud at the author’s audacity and confidence. Carr is having *so much* fun here.)

– The Plague Court Murders (A classic locked-room, or locked-hut, situation. With a solution that is inventive but easy to understand and satisfying – though you might wonder how practical it would be to carry out. If you intend to commit a locked-room murder, I mean.)

Note: The first three of the above titles I would have no problem recommending to someone who has never read Carr, is a big Agatha Christie fan, and prefers a relatively cosy/traditional mystery narrative. The last two… it’s probably better that you acquire a taste for Carr’s pyrotechnics first. The Plague Court Murders, for instance, is very heavy on dark atmosphere.
I’m unsure how to categorise The Burning Court along these lines: on the one hand it is a cleanly written book, with a lucid, easy-to-follow plot, a single setting, and a small group of characters; on the other hand, the tightrope it walks between the rational and the supernatural might not work for some readers.

Category 2: not my grade-A favourites, but I love many things about them; highly recommended overall.

– Till Death Do Us Part (A village-mystery Carr that would probably work very well for a Christie fan.)

– The Hollow Man, a.k.a. The Three Coffins – sadly the only Carr novel to have been consistently in print over the decades. Includes the legendary “locked-room lecture” by the harrumphing Dr Gideon Fell.

– The Seat of the Scornful, a.k.a. Death Turns the Tables (This is the one with the indoor swimming-pool scene that I’m convinced influenced a famous scene in the 1942 film Cat People. I would have placed the book higher except that the “how-dunit” or “how-it-happened” is just a little too complicated for my liking.)

– The Ten Teacups, a.k.a. The Peacock Feather Murders (With not one but *two* murder solutions that really stretch plausibility; but it’s very exciting for all that, and there is one moment near the end, involving the discovery of a body – not saying any more – that is as morbidly, eye-poppingly funny as anything else I have read in Golden Age crime-fic.)

– The Corpse in the Waxworks
– It Walks by Night
(These two are among Carr’s first novels, featuring his first series detective Henri Bencolin – and these books, both set in Paris, have a distinctly creepy quality, call it Grand Guignol or Gothic or whatever, that you won’t find in most of his later works.)

Category 3: liked these, but that’s about it.

– The Judas Window (Note: this is the only Carr novel that I have read *online* – and on my laptop, at that, which is not the most fulfilling experience. I mention this because it is one of his most widely admired works, and my relatively subdued feelings about it may have to do with the circumstances of my reading. I am thinking of reading a physical copy soon.)

– The White Priory Murders (As many Carr fans point out, this one has a terrific solution – a simple, uncluttered one – to an “impossible” footprints mystery. But the road to that denouement is sometimes laboured and uninvolving.)

– The Eight of Swords (A wonderfully well-hidden murderer; but again, some of the midsection is a slog to get through.)

I’m sure I’ll be talking Carr again within the next 2-3 months, since I have ordered a few more books, including some that have cult followings…