The "intended" synopsis is: Psychiatrist David Garth is infatuated with the young widow Betty Calder. However, one night a Scotland Yard inspector appears before Garth and informs him that Betty is, in fact, a blackmailing Satanist prostitute. That night, one of Garth's friends identifies Betty as the woman who tried to strangle her aunt and then disappeared from a locked basement. And the next day, a corpse turns up in the bathing pavilion of Betty's house, even though there were no footprints in the surrounding sand. The Scotland Yard inspector insists that Betty is behind these crimes. Will Garth be able to discover the truth of these crimes and, more importantly, the truth of Betty herself?
The actual plot: All of the above, except we quickly learn that Betty has an older sister who looks just like her, Glynis Stukeley. Glynis is the blackmailing Satanist prostitute, Glynis is the person Garth's friend actually claims she witnessed, and—Glynis is the corpse in the bathing pavilion, so we can't pin that one on her. But two out of three ain't bad!
Leveling the accusations against Betty and then almost immediately revealing that people were just mistaking Glynis for Betty was a transparent attempt to make an intriguing synopsis that doesn't actually fully match the plot of the book. At least the murder accusation against Betty sticks (for most of the book).
Anyway, forget about the attempting strangling. Drive it from your mind. The solution behind the disappearance from the basement is insultingly trivial, so don't waste any mental energy on it and don't expect anything from it. The most surprising part of the solution is that Carr, the supposed master of the locked room, would use such a cheap trick, and so late in his career.
Fortunately, the bathing pavilion murder is a bit better. The explanation for the lack of footprints in the sand is clever and elegant. The biggest issue is that the identity of the murderer feels arbitrary. Especially since most of the evidence points towards someone else.... The motive is also weird, and touches some dark places that the book just passes over.
The driving force of Garth's pursuit of the truth is his love for Betty, and there are a few other characters with romantic relationships. Unfortunately, since this is a Carr novel, a lot of the conversation is reduced to unwieldy melodrama. There's also a lot of instances of characters who know something but abruptly cut off the conversation without explaining their thoughts, which gets old fast.
The other main force behind the plot is the Scotland Yard inspector, who, like Garth, works tirelessly to solve the murder. But while Garth is convinced of Betty's innocence, the inspector is convinced of her guilt. Garth and the inspector in engage in logical sparring several times over the course of the book (including the denouement), and those are some of the best scenes in the novel.
There's three more details about The Witch of the Low Tide that I think are noteworthy.
First, The Mystery of the Yellow Room is brought up a few times, and factors into the discussions of the "locked" bathing pavilion. It's always fun working in classics of detective fiction into other stories, but The Mystery of the Yellow Room is spoiled in this book, so I'd recommend not reading The Witch of the Low Tide unless you've already reard The Mystery of the Yellow Room.
Second, this is one of Carr's few standalone novels. There is no Fell, Merrivale, or Bencolin (or even Patrick Butler).
Lastly, this is a "historical" novel, but it's set in 1907, the year after Carr's birth. I just found it amusing how it was billed as historical, but was still set within his lifetime.
Anyway, as much nonsense as The Witch of the Low Tide has, it's not enough to get in the way of the main trick. It's a pretty quick read, so while this isn't something I'd use to introduce someone to Carr or detective fiction in general, fans of the genre should get enough enjoyment from it.
No comments:
Post a Comment