Rian Johnson on John Dickson Carr

For those of you who know and like Rian Johnson’s work – the Knives Out series, his direction of some major Breaking Bad episodes, etc – I wanted to link to this piece by him, about one of the mystery writers he most admires (who has also lately become one of my favourites).

This is Johnson waxing eloquent on the great John Dickson Carr. It was good to see this because, as mentioned in recent posts here, my reading life in the past few months has largely entailed a discovery/re-discovery of Carr’s work (thanks to some of his novels slowly coming back into print), and I have been staggered by the quality of his output during his peak years: the early 1930s to the mid-40s. One of the big literary injustices I can think of is that while Agatha Christie has been among the bestselling authors of all time worldwide, Carr (whose crime-fiction oeuvre at least for the period mentioned above was every bit as impressive and probably more varied) was almost entirely out of circulation for many decades – with many people who think of themselves as whodunit fans barely knowing his work at all.

I would have preferred to avoid comparisons since these writers have different strengths and weaknesses, but at the present moment I find Carr’s work more stimulating. That said, I also get why Christie’s books travelled better overseas, were more easily adapted to film, and were more accessible to younger readers. (I read most of my Christies for the first time between the ages of 11 and 15; I don’t think I would have found Carr as appealing at that age. This is another reason why I should avoid qualitative comparisons: my reading of these two has been at completely different times in my life, more than 30 years apart.)

Anyway, read the piece. I agree with what Rian Johnson says about Carr’s prose here: “The first quality that blows your hair back in any of Carr’s novels is so fundamental that it’s easy to take it for granted: beyond the plotting or the puzzling, beyond the mystery itself, first and foremost the man is just one hell of a writer. Like walking into a well-put-together room, when you’re in the hands of a good writer you can just feel it…”

Interestingly, the book he is mainly discussing here – The Problem of the Wire Cage – is not rated too highly by serious Carr fans. But I plan to read it soon, and I’ll get this edition which has the Johnson intro. 

P.S. I didn’t realise that the 1972 film version of Sleuth included an allusion to the murder in The Problem of the Wire Cage.

P.P.S. here, on a very good Classic Mystery blog, is a comparison of Carr and Christie.

(Coming soon, a listing/ranking of the JDC novels I have read so far)