Tag Archives: John Dickson Carr

The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr

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The Lost Gallows cover

The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr has just been reprinted by the British Library but it was first published in 1931. In no way could this book be described as a cosy mystery, it’s the very opposite, so atmospheric and full of creepiness, verging on horror at times, but still a good read even if you lean towards comfy crime usually.

The setting is a very foggy autumnal London, beginning in the notorious Brimstone Club where M. Henri Bencolin and Sir John Landervorne are examining a miniature set of gallows. Sir John had been assistant commissioner of the metropopitan police and Bencolin is the head of the Paris police. The set of gallows had suddenly appeared on the desk of Mr El Moulk, another member of the club, and it has unnerved him more than just a wee bit. The rumour is that Jack Ketch, a famous London hangman of folklore is roaming around London with his gibbet, looking for people to hang.

There’s many a spooky incident, with a limousine apparently being driven by an obviously dead man. With Bencolin making frequent references to the Red Widow, in other words the guillotine, this is very far from the works of the likes of Agatha Christie who steers clear of anything as sordid as the death penalty. To be honest I’m happier with that style of writing. I’m going to be utterly sexist here and possibly entirely wrong but I think that John Dickson Carr’s style might be more popular with male readers. Having said that this is the seventh book by John Dickson Carr that I’ve read and I’ve liked them all, he’s just not a favourite. This is a good read though, especially if you lean towards horror.

I was sent a copy of this book by British Library for review, my thanks to them.

It Walks by Night by John Dickson Carr

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It Walks by Night cover

It Walks by Night by John Dickson Carr was published in 1930 and it’s the first of his books to be published. As with vintage Penguin crime books it’s short at just 190 pages, but it felt like twice as long for me. Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for it, the crime takes place very quickly which is always a plus for me and it’s a locked room mystery which I usually enjoy. I can only say that John Dickson Carr’s writing improved over the years.

The setting is a gambling house in Paris where the decapitated body of the Duc de Saligny has been discovered in a room. How did it happen?

I slogged on to the end but didn’t really care who did it or why. I rarely manage to give up on a book when I’ve begun reading it – a habit that I wish I could break!

Maybe you enjoyed this one, if so – do tell.

Holiday book purchases

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Autumn Books

I managed to add eight more books to the many waiting in my TBR queue while we were away in Wales and East Sussex a few weeks ago. I bought All the Books of my Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith in a secondhand bookshop in Rye which is owned by a lovely Irish woman – who of course had no problem understanding our accent. I dread to think what trouble she must have had over the forty years or so that she has lived in Rye. I must admit that I had never heard of Sheila Kaye-Smith but she seems to have been local to East Sussex and ‘world famous’ in her neighbourhood.

I already have a few Monica Dickens books to read, I read some in the 1970s but none since then. The Room Upstairs seems to be quite different though – with the setting being America. I’m not going to pass up on a chance to buy a Heyer or even a Persephone which Doreen by Barbara Noble is, and I recall the Raffles series when it was on TV back in the year dot so I thought I’d give The Amateur Cracksman a go. The other three that I bought are Penguin Crimes which seem to be getting more and more thin on the ground.

All the Books of My Life by Sheila Kaye-Smith
The Room Upstairs by Monica Dickens
False Colours by Georgette Heyer
Doreen by Barbara Noble
Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Hornung

and three Penguin Crime books
Poison in Jest by John Dickson Carr
Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford
The crimson in the purple by Holly Roth

Have you read any of these ones?

Papa La-Bas by John Dickson Carr

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The Homicidal Colonel cover

Papa La-Bas by John Dickson Carr was published in 1969. The setting is 1858 New Orleans, it’s an unstable time as people can feel the probability of civil war in the near future. The story involves voodoo which is apparently called Papa La-Bas in New Orleans and isn’t always a force for evil, it can be used for good too.

There’s murder, romance, American southern gentility and for me it didn’t half drag, but I struggled on to the end, probably because there was a likeable Scotsman in it. As I recall John Dickson Carr was of Scottish extraction.

I did have a bit of a laugh at one point though as a character says: “I won’t ask about the state of the banking business. I won’t even ask whether any widows and orphans have been swindled today.” So nothing changes.

I’d read a couple of his historical mysteries before this one and quite enjoyed them, but for me the best thing about this book was the cover, I like the look of those US paddle steamers. I blame Mark Twain!

My Blog’s Name in TBR Books

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I’ve never done this meme before but lots of the blogs that I enjoy frequenting have been doing it including Margaret at BooksPlease and I decided to join in. The idea is that you choose book titles from your TBR pile which begin with the letters of your blog name. So, here goes – sixteen of them. I intend to read them before the end of this year.

TBR Books

P – Papa-la-bas by John Dickson Carr

I – If This Is a Man by Primo Levi

N – Nicolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett

I – If Not Now, When by Primo Levi

N – Not So Quiet by Helen Zenna Smith

G – Guest in the House by Philip MacDonald

F – For the Sake of the School by Angela Brazil

O – Old Hall-New Hall by Michael Innes

R – Reputation for a Song by Edward Grierson

T – Troy Chimneys by Margaret Kennedy

H – How Late It Was – How Late by James Kelman

E – Edinburgh by Robert Louis Stevenson

W – Winter by Len Deighton

E – Everything You Need by A.L. Kennedy

S – Spiderweb by Penelope Lively

T – Trooper to the Southern Cross by Angela Thirkell

Have you read any of these books and if so where should I begin?

My Christmas Books

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books 1

I’m thankful to be able to say that most of the gifts I got at Christmas were either books or book related, in fact I got so many I think I’ll be doing two posts on my haul.

I went a bit Dorothy Dunnett mad and decided to collect her Niccolo series, I hope I enjoy them.

As it gets towards Christmas I just tell Jack to wrap up any books that I buy in second-hand bookshops, most of the time I forget what the books are by the time it comes to unwrapping them at Christmas so it’s still a surprise, the kind I like. I really don’t enjoy real surprises as sometimes they turn into real shocks!

The Gaudy by J.I.M. Stewart
The Young Patullo by J.I.M. Stewart
The Madonna of the Astrolabe by J.I.M. Stewart
Papa La-Bas by John Dickson Carr
Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
Mary Poppins in the Park by P.L. Travers
Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd
Words of Mercury by Patrick Leigh Fermor

and by Dorothy Dunnett:

Niccolo Rising
The Spring of the Ram
Gemini
The Unicorn Hunt

I didn’t read the Mary Poppins books as a child and after enjoying the film Saving Mr Banks at Christmas about P.L Travers’s relationship with Walt Disney and the making of Mary Poppins I thought it was about time I rectified that and luckily I found an old copy in St Andrews.

This year I plan to concentrate on reading my own books!

Vintage Crime x 3

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For me vintage crime is perfect for holiday reading so I have three to write about which I read when we were in the Netherlands.

The first one is The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr, it was first published in 1935 and features Dr Fell as the detective. This one was a real puzzler which kept me guessing. It’s a murder mystery which is described in the blurb as an eerie thriller, full of impossible crimes cleverly planned – and I agree with that.

The second one is A Family Affair by Michael Innes, which was first published in 1969. I didn’t enjoy this one quite so much. It begins at Sir John Appleby’s son Bobby’s Oxford College’s dining club. An after dinner anecdote piques Appleby’s interest. He’s left wondering if there’s an elaborate scammer going around in the art world, depriving people of their treasures. Innes did enjoy using the art world as a setting for his stories, especially in the 1960s and 70s but they aren’t always the strongest of storylines.

The third book is Woman Slaughter by Elizabeth Ferrars, it was published in 1989 and it was given to me by a friend who said that he couldn’t get beyond page 55. He had read earlier books by Ferrars and enjoyed them so I was wondering how I would feel about it. I have to say that it’s a real shame that my friend didn’t read on for another 15 pages or so because that was when it all began to kick off and I really enjoyed it.

It begins with the death of an elderly man, the victim of a hit and run accident. He was a neighbour of Virginia Freer, and Virginia’s estranged husband Felix thinks he might have witnessed the accident. Felix doesn’t want to get involved so decides not to tell the police what he saw, but he is tempted to dabble in their investigation and he unwittingly makes things much worse. This is another one which kept me guessing.

Fire, Burn by John Dickson Carr

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Fire, Burn is one of John Dickson Carr’s historical crime/mystery books. I did enjoy it.

It begins in the 20th century, the 1950s – but as Detective Inspector John Cheviot travels in a taxi to Scotland Yard he suddenly realises that he is in a horse drawn carriage and by the time he gets out of it he has been transported back to 1829, to the beginnings of the police service and the Bow Street Runners.

Bizarrely, everybody at Old Scotland Yard seem to know exactly who he is, and Cheviot can recognise the historical figures he meets there. When a murder takes place at a dance that Cheviot was attending he gets to work to solve the case.

This book was first published in 1957 and I think Dickson Carr must have enjoyed writing it as it combines murder mystery with history, which was obviously something which he took a real interest in.

At the end of the book there are a few pages headed Notes for the Curious. The second part of which is called Manners, Customs, Speech. He writes about a diary entry of a woman called Clarissa Trant, in 1829 she used the phrase Tell that to the Marines – with her own italics and meaning as we do now that, the thing which she has written about is not at all believable.

I love that sort of thing, often when I read something – a word or phrase jumps out at me as being anachronistic, you know how quickly slang words go out of fashion and seem completely dated when people keep using them after their ‘use by date’. So I was amazed but pleased to see that ‘tell that to the Marines’ was being used way back in 1829. I really thought that it was an American 20th century phrase, mainly because I remember one of Alistair Cooke’s Letters from America featuring the phrase, apparently someone, I can’t remember who, had had their arm twisted by the Nazis during World War 2 and the upshot was that they had to do a propaganda broadcast on the radio. They ended it with words something like: Tell that to the army, tell that to the navy and above all – tell that to the Marines!! Luckily the Germans didn’t see through it.

Such a shame that P.G. Wodehouse didn’t think of doing something like that when he was coerced into making broadcasts in Germany, it would have saved him such a lot of trouble after the end of the war. But then, Wodehouse seems to have been so slow witted that he didn’t even realise that what he was doing was being of help to the Nazis.

Anyway, back to the book, as I said – it was an enjoyable read although that being ‘wheeched’ back in time thing via an ordinary mode of transport does seem a wee bit cliched, but maybe it didn’t in 1957. The last Woody Allen film I watched began in exactly the same way, but I enjoyed that too!

Book Sale at St Andrew’s and St George’s Edinburgh

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We got up early on Saturday morning so that we wouldn’t be too late in getting to the book sale in St Andrew’s and St George’s Church in Edinburgh, the proceeds all go to Christian Aid. It was Linda from Edinburgh who reminded me of the sale, so a big thank you to Linda!

St Andrew's & St George's Church
By the time we got to the church it was really chucking it down with rain and the books outside the church all had plastic covers over them and everbody had packed into the church – it was heaving with folks and it made it very difficult to see the books, but I persevered, and we went our separate ways. I ran out of money, had to find Jack, found him in the crowd, waved madly, he didn’t see me, he went in the opposite direction, the woman at the stall seemed to think I was going to nick her books, but in the end it was all sorted out and the upshot was I spent a lot of money and Jack didn’t spend nearly as much, that’s usually the way of it. As you can see from the photo above, by the time we got upstairs the rain had stopped and the crowd had thinned.

I couldn’t resist taking this photo of the newly redecorated church, it has had a lot spent on it recently and the organ has been refurbished.
St Andrew's & St George's Edinburgh

It was the ceiling which really attracted me though, beautiful, but I’m glad I didn’t have to paint it. Internally the church is really lovely with pale wood, maybe golden oak and the pews all have blue velvet buttoned cushions, I’m sure in my young day that would have been seen as being un-Presbyterian and just too comfy for church-goers. How times
change!
St Andrew's & St George'sChurch Edinburgh

Anyway, to the books, here they are.

books

The three in the middle are:
The House That Is Our Own by O. Douglas
The Provincial Lady in Wartime by E.M. Delafield
Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford. I’ve read it, but it was over 30 years ago I’m sure and was a library book.I want to read it again.

The other one which can’t be seen very well is:
We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor. I’ve never read anything by him but I enjoy listening to him on Radio 4 extra on Sunday afternoons whilst cooking the dinner.

Two of the vintage crime Penguins I haven’t even heard of.

The Content Assignment by Holly Roth
Comes the Blind Fury by Douglas Rutherford

The third Penguin is Captain Cut-Throat by John Dickson Carr.

The Things We See is a Penguin book which just screams 1950s at you and is about design. It has some lovely photos and even the endpapers are 1950s design.

Civil To Strangers by Barbara Pym. I’ve read quite a lot of her books but most of them so long ago, I can’t remember if I’ve read this one or not. If so, it’s due a re-read.

Anna Buchan and O.Douglas by Wendy Forrester is a book which I’ve been looking for.

The Prince and the Pilgrim by Mary Stewart is one I’ve been meaning to buy for ages, it’s the last in her Merlin/Arthur series and I’m going to read it for the up and coming Mary Stewart readalong at Gudrun’s Tights.

Oasis of the North by Dawn MacLeod is about Inverewe Gardens in the north west of Scotland.

Scottish Highland Watercolours by Sutton Palmer is a collection of 16 watercolours of the Highlands, all very scenic.

I could have bought a lot more books and this week I’ve been restraining myself from getting on a bus and going back for another look because I really didn’t get a chance to look at the many gardening and craft books which were on sale. But I think I’ll be good and resist the temptaion, particularly as there is another library book sale locally on Saturday. The George Street, Edinburgh book sale continues until the end of the week.

The Demoniacs by John Dickson Carr

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The Demoniacs

I bought this book quite recently at a charity shop I think and I was quite disappointed when I realised that this is one of Dickson Carr‘s historical whodunnits, set in London in 1757. The 1930s/40s and 50s are really my favourite crime settings, it’s all those steam trains and Austin Healys that I love. It was first published in 1962.

But I thoroughly enjoyed The Demoniacs which is a great mixture of murder and romance. Jeffrey Wynne is a sort of under cover Bow Street Runner, he has already saved Peg Ralston, a beautiful young heiress from a fate worse than death in a so called high class French brothel. On getting Peg back to London Jeffrey discovers that she is in even worse danger there, can he come to her rescue again?

Dickson Carr uses real historical figures such as Laurence Sterne the author of Tristram Shandy, and John Fielding, the famous ‘blind beak’ who set up the Bow Street Runners.

The whole atmosphere feels right, Dickson Carr must have done a lot of reaearch about the period, the only thing which grated slightly was one minor character at the beginning who kept saying things like ‘split my bottom’ – it reminded me of the silly ass character in Blackadder played by Hugh Laurie.