It Walks By Night

It Walks By Night is the debut novel of John Dickson Carr, and much better than the other one. It features one of Carr’s recurring detectives, Henri Bencolin of the French police, and, naturally, a locked room murder. As a first novel, it seems emblematic—clever and bold, but a bit underdeveloped.

The Eight of Swords

Mysteries should take advantage of their premise. If the story takes place in a unique setting, then the solution should involve a trick that's only possible in that particular location. If the hook of the crime is a unique or bizarre state of the crime scene, then there should be a compelling reason the crime scene was in that state.

In The Eight of Swords, the culprit leaves an Eight of Swords at the crime scene. Quite easy to understand, no? That tarot card is one of the main draws of the book; after all, it's what the novel is titled after! And yet... there's no compelling reason for that card to be there. Heck, I have absolutely no idea why the culprit left the card there, other than to provide a clue to Dr. Fell to use to deduce their identity.

The Judas Window

James Answell has been accused of murdering his fiancee's father, Avory Hume. The case is quite grim: the murder occurred in Hume's study, where every window and the sole door was bolted—not merely locked!—from the inside. There were no secret passages, and absolutely no gaps in any of the entrances. The murder weapon was an arrow that had been hanging in the study, and the only fingerprints on it are Answell's. Answell claims that this was a set-up and that he drank tampered whiskey... but the decanter in Hume's study is full, all the glasses are dry, and the doctor who checks Answell concludes he wasn't drugged.

Despite these overwhelming circumstances, one man believes in Answell's innocence—Sir Henry Merrivale—and takes up his defense in court.

The Witch of the Low Tide

I find The Witch of the Low Tide a bit funny, because it is very obviously structured in a way to make the synopsis more exciting, but misleading.

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!

In Spite of Thunder

A classic Carr set-up with some not-so-classic Carr elements, In Spite of Thunder is not Carr's best solution, but it is certainly one of his most enjoyable adventures.