I've recently begun the immensely pleasurable pastime of reading and re-reading the books of John Dickson Carr. I own copies of about half of his works and am trying to acquire the remainder. Sadly and inexcusably, his books are largely out of print these days, so that means I must check the second-hand market.
It's hard for me to believe, but I haven't been to the Book Trader in years--so many years that it has long since moved from its cramped South Street location to an even more cramped spot on Second near Market, just down the street from the Arden Theatre. Its shelves are overflowing with thousands of books and its aisles ought to be declared a disaster area.
Still, with all those books, it only had two Carrs; happily I owned neither of them, so my Carr collection grew to 36 volumes.
Carr was the master of the impossible crime, usually but not always some variation of the locked room puzzle.
In the best of the Gideon Fell series, The Three Coffins, Dr. Fell famously gives a lecture for an entire chapter on the various ways that locked room puzzles can be constructed. I've read The Three Coffins at least three times (and will probably keep re-reading it as long as my eyesight lasts). In it Carr describes two seemingly impossible crimes: a murder by gunshot committed in a room whose only exit is under observation by two witnesses, yet when the door is opened only the victim is found to be inside and there is no gun in evidence; another murder committed at point blank range in front of witnesses, but the evidence shows only the footprints of the victim in the snow.
But Carr's masterpiece has to be The Burning Court, a wonderful blend of witchcraft and crime detection.
It opens with a man riding home on a train and finding a photograph in a book that looks exactly like his wife, but the photo is labelled as that of a woman who was executed for murder 70 years earlier.
Soon a murder is discovered that has several impossible aspects and the evidence begins to pile up that his wife is indeed a witch. Is there a rational explanation for the deeds?
Carr keeps the reader guessing until practically the very last page.
Overall The Burning Court is one of the most satisfying and surprising detective stories that I have ever read.
