8/18/14

Solving the Unsolvable


"In my cases, sir, you can have practically everything."
- Dr. Gideon Fell ("The Hangman Won't Wait," collected in The Door to Doom, 1980) 
Yes, I know. I have criminally neglected this blog over the past few months, but, hopefully, activity will now revert back to its regular pace without any interruptions. And now, without further ado...

The Third Bullet and Other Stories of Detection (1954) is a collection of short stories by John Dickson Carr, one of the Old Masters of the Impossible Crime tale, who seldomly disappoints – even if I knew a few stories from other books and incarnations (i.e. radio plays). A novella, "The Third Bullet," opens the collections and stars a prototype of Colonel March (e.g. The Department of Queer Complaints, 1940), Colonel Marquis, tasked with looking into the seemingly impossible shooting of Charles Mortlake. Mortlake was shot in his pavilion, which exits where either bolted shut or under observation and the evidence points to one person. The explanation follows Merrivale's Law of the "blinkin' cussedness of things in general," which made an extremely confusing murder appear to be completely impossible, however, it's main weakness is its length. It should've been much, much shorter. I can also recommend the mini-anthology Locked Room Puzzles (1986), which includes this novella and three others by Bill Pronzini, Clayton Rawson and Edward D. Hoch.

"The Clue of the Red Wig" details the peculiar circumstances surrounding the murder of Hazel Loring, a columnist with a loyal following of housewives who read her weekly column, "Smile and Grow Fit," whose denuded body was found on a park bench in Victoria Square on a cold December night – most of her clothes neatly folded besides her. A young, cheeky Franco-British journalist, Jacqueline Dubois, takes on the case on behalf of the Daily Record and helps Inspector Adam Bell find a clever answer to the baffling problem. Miss Dubois herself brings some Gallic flair to a quintessential English detective story, saying such things like "hot ziggety dame!" and offering to make love to the Assistant Commissioner in exchange for a scoop. And, of course, casting a young, French journalist as one of the detectives is nothing more than a poorly disguised nod and a wink at one of Carr's favorite locked room mysteries, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune (The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 1907) by Gaston Leroux.

"The House in Goblin Wood" is one of few short story appearances for the Old Maestro, Sir Henry Merrivale, and it's generally considered to be on par with the best full-length cases of H.M. Twenty years before the opening of the story, a young girl, named Vicky, disappeared from a house that was locked and bolted from the inside – only to reappear a week later with a story of having lived with the fairies. When she returns to the house two decades later, she disappears again under similar circumstances, however, this time it becomes a grim fairy-tale. This is like G.K. Chesterton at his best: treacherously benevolent on the surface.

"The Wrong Problem" is a semi-inverted mystery with the tendency to twist and turn, in which Dr. Gideon Fell has a talk with a man by a lake, located in a valley in Somerset, about a crime that has been buried in the distant past. There's an artificial island in the lake with a summerhouse and the man was suspected to be responsible for the death of two of his family members, who died in the summerhouse. One of them in a bare, top-floor room with bars decorating the sole window and the only door was under constant observation. The method was recycled from another story, but, as a whole, it was nice, leisurely and well clued detective story.

"The Proverbial Murder" involves the fatal shooting of Dr. Ludwig Meyer, a German refugee, working a dissertation on atoms and the police surrounded the cottage at the time, because his English wife had reported him as a spy. Ardent readers of Carr will probably figure out large swats of the solution before Dr. Fell. There are bits and pieces that cropped in other stories, but even without that it's not that difficult to get on the right track. A simple, but nice, detective-meets-spy story.

I was already familiar with "The Locked Room" as a radio play, in sound and script, in which a book collector, Francis Seton, is assaulted inside his locked and guarded office, but Dr. Fell makes short work of the problem. And, to be honest, the story is a notch or two below Carr's best and the locked room problem/solution impressed me as sloppy in their presentation. Not all that bad, but also far from the best.

"The Man from Paris" shows why John Dickson Carr is grossly underrated as a writer of historical mystery-and adventure stories and here he combines it with his talent to imitate 19th century fiction writers. In the Dr. Gideon Fell mystery The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933), Carr wrote a completely imaginary, but very convincing, passage from a lost Edgar Allan Poe tale. Here a Parisian travels to America to right a wrong, but is confronted with a dying woman and her will that has disappeared under impossible circumstances, however, as a mystery, it’s only of interest for the secret identity of one of the characters – and the historical atmosphere of mid-19th century America, if you enjoy historical mystery. By the way, while I was reading the story, I suddenly wondered who the president was at the time and the story immediately answered with a reference to Zachary Taylor. As to say, here dummy. Hey, it could've been James Polk, right?

And thus concludes my first, proper review in what feels like ages and I have still failed in giving my all-time favorite mystery writer a bad review, which I solely blame on Carr for insisting on being an unapologetic mystery writer. I mean, how can snooty purist like me take umbrage at a man who loudly proclaimed: "...I wanted to write detective stories. I don't mean that I wanted to write great novels, or any nonsense like that! I mean that I simply damn well wanted to write detective stories." It's an attitude that's strongly reflected in his work and it's a stance that's still hugely appreciated! 

13 comments:

  1. Interesting complaint about "The Third Bullet". I believe Doug Greene said that the copy you read was a badly editied version, and if THIS was too long, I dread reading the original.

    "The House in Goblin Wood" should be required reading for those who think Golden Age mysteries were free of gruesomeness...

    I read the story that "The Wrong Problem" was based on/became. Good story (I wanted to punch that uncle every time he showed up) but the solution isn't one I care for. It did give me an idea though... (Sorry for the rambling post...)

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    1. If you really want to shock and upset people’s false and cozy view of classic mysteries, you should introduce them to Gladys Mitchell. She’ll upset more than just the notion that Golden Age detective stories were all light, breezy village cozies.

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  2. I still wonder why the Japanese collection with the same title, has a slightly different story selection...

    And I too thought that the Third Bullet was waaaaaay too long. Especially in Japanese *ahem*.

    (And your neglecting-your-blog-mode still results in more posts a month than the minimum quota I've set for my blog ^^' Though because of a couple writing binge sessions I had, I'm now in the curious position of having enough reviews finished to last me until mid-January at a normal posting rate >_>)

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    1. Some of Carr's short story collections have a confusing publication history, because subsequent editions would leave out and/or add stories that weren't in the original collection. The Department of Queer Complaints is a good example of this. There are three or four different editions with a varying amount of stories in each of them. You can probably chalk that up to copyright issues between US and UK editions.

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  3. Great stuff TC - I have the Pronzini/Rawson/Carr anthology too - does that use the cut version of the text that was shortened by Dannay for a reprint in EQMM? I have a feeling that the longer version is the one in Doug Greene's March, Merrivale and Murder anthology

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    1. I'm sure Locked Room Puzzles used the original version (c. 100 pages) and the story in this collection was, I think, the same length as the original.

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    2. If you're referring to "The Third Bullet", you want to check Fell and Foul Play.

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    3. Thanks for the correction, I got the wrong anthology - I'll have to check but I did think that Dannay version was the one used pretty much throughout until the Greene book. I really will have to look now - you died TC, making me read even more Carr!!!

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  4. I have read the complete version of The Third Bullet in Doug Greene's collection, Fell and Foul Play, and it is excellent! As Doug pointed out in his introductory remarks, "Frederic Dannay...omitted large chunks of the story, including in several instances entire pages. Character descriptions, details of the murder site, red herrings, and even some clues to the solution - all disappeared." As all other magazine and book reprints used Dannay's abridgment, I recommend that Carr fans seek out a copy of Fell and Foul Play for a fine example of Carr's ingenuity.

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  5. Addenda - first off TC, apologies for writing you 'you died TC' - I meant, more correctly, to say 'you fiend TC' - sorry about that, a bit more macabre that I was aiming for! I have checked the 'Locked Room Puzzles' mystery novellas anthology edited by Greenberg and Pronzini and it is definitely the shortened text. The giveaway is easy to spot as at the end of paragraph 2 it should say that the .32 is of 'Belgian manufacture' - if it doesn't, then it's the Dannay abridgement.

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    1. I figured it was a typo and guess macabre ones are appropriate for this blog. And it seems this edition reprinted the arbidged version, since I can't find the reference to the Belgian manufacture.

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    2. Ouch, and you still found it too long ... :)

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  6. I read The House in Goblin Wood a couple of days ago (it's included in The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories which I've been working my way through). Good story.

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