Time for the second part of my Solve-Along for The Skeleton in the Clock. Part one can be found here.
Category Archives: John Dickson Carr
Solve-Along: The Skeleton in the Clock (Part 1)
Solve-Along time, I reckon.
If you haven’t read one of these before, I write up my thoughts on a mystery as I go along, and try and solve it before the end. To avoid devastating people with spoilers, I try to pick books that are very obscure or have had poor reviews. This time, it’s Carter Dickson’s The Skeleton in the Clock. Continue reading
Seeing is Believing
One of John Dickson Carr’s most maligned mysteries, Seeing is Believing takes a ridiculous murder plot based around hypnosis, rubber daggers and poisoned grapefruits, and then tops it off with a trick which many people think is cheating. I agree, although I don’t think anyone has yet put their finger on exactly why it’s cheating. In today’s post, I suggest that the fairness of an author’s mystery depends on a good deal of unspoken context, and that it might be possible for a trick to be fair in one author’s hands but unfair in another’s.
[Spoilers for Seeing is Believing. If you want an unspoilt review, see yesterday’s post. For a more favourable second opinion, check out the Puzzle Doctor’s excellent blog.] Continue reading
Three Late Carrs
I spent most of November in China, which is not a particularly relaxing place! So it seemed the perfect opportunity to do so untaxing reading. I finally took the opportunity to read some of John Dickson Carr’s later H.M. mysteries: Seeing is Believing (1941), The Gilded Man (1942) and My Late Wives (1946) (all written, of course, under his pseudonym of Carter Dickson). I was pleasantly surprised, to be honest. Almost all prolific authors show signs of decline as they get older, but Carr’s seemed to be particularly pronounced. I’d been expecting extremely poor mysteries, but instead I found interesting ideas marred by imperfect execution. But there’s still plenty for the Carr fan to appreciate, at least in the latter two.
[No spoilers here. As I mentioned in my reboot post, Monday’s reviews will be spoiler free. But please come back tomorrow for an in-depth analysis.]
Complete Disregard for Spoilers 