The narrator is a young man staying in Paris who knows Bencolin through his father. Bencolin has been tasked with protecting the young noble Raoul de Chagny Saligny. Saligny has just married his wife, Louise, but unfortunately for the couple, Louise’s ex-husband is a jealous and murderous psychopath known as Laurent. Laurent has escaped captivity and sent a threatening message to Saligny—and the authorities have reason to believe that Laurent has had his face altered with plastic surgery, meaning he could be anyone. Hence the guard duty.
Of course, since this is a mystery novel, Bencolin is doomed to failure. Saligny is found decapitated in the smoking room of a nightclub—but both doors to the room were watched (one by a police detective, the other by Bencolin himself) and nobody but the victim entered or left.
I actually read It Walks By Night before, long ago, and so while I remembered one part of the solution, it was mostly still a surprise. Instead of focusing on the logic and mystery, I just sat back and soaked in Carr’s dark, dreamy atmosphere of Parisian nights. Normally I find Carr’s dialogue hard to get into, but coasting on vibes made it a bit easier. The book is bizarre, with all these well-to-dos caught in convoluted love n-gons as they flit about Paris nightclubs and Versailles villas, but accepting and leaning into the ridiculousness is what makes it fun.
The trick falls within a standard pattern for this type of problem, but there’s enough convolution to keep it interesting. Overall I find It Walks By Night ambitious for a first novel, although perhaps a bit contrived. A lot of murder mysteries take place in a controlled location (like an isolated country house) because it makes it easy to plausibly handle all persons who are related (or could be related) to the crime. But It Walks By Night takes place in a busy nightclub, so in retrospect it was quite fortunate for the culprit that no random passerby ever went to the wrong place at the wrong time.
There are a few other crinkles or aspects that feel underdeveloped, likely as a result that this was Carr’s first book. For instance, Bencolin has another companion with him at the nightclub, who appears to be spooked by something, but we never learn what. The title and opening passage of the book suggest the culprit has some sort of supernatural ability to pass through walls by the dark of the night, but the book never explores this after the introduction, and I wish Carr had leaned into that angle a bit harder.
Additionally, according to my recollection from the first time I read the book was that there was supposed to be a map, but the copy I read didn’t have one. I found a floor plan online consistent with my memory, so I think the version I found just omitted the map for some reason. The map is not necessarily essential, but still extremely helpful for parsing the solution, so the deletion is a bit bizarre.
Perhaps in compensation for dropping the map, the copy I read was bundled with “The Shadow of the Goat,” Carr’s first short story, which also features Bencolin. I thought it was good for what it was. There are several mysterious incidents, which gives a quick setup and payoff. Since it’s so short there’s not much time to mull over the case before it’s solved, but you get a lot of mystery for the length. The most interesting element to me was the parallels in the solutions of “The Shadow of the Goat” and It Walks By Night, since they were Carr’s first two stories.
It Walks By Night isn’t a must-read of the genre, but if you’re a fan of Carr or just want to try one of his books, it’s not a bad choice.
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