The Dead Man's Knock, by John Dickson Carr
A self-parodying Carr mystery; I didn't like it
(Review posted 16 Oct 2004 18:50:31)

I usually like John Dickson Carr, for his dark and smoky and intelligent mysteries, and his general skill with atmosphere. But not only did I not like this book, I'm also afraid I'm now going to like future Carr books less for having read it.

In general tone and writing style "The Dead Man's Knock" is a parody of a Carr novel. Every word and every action is freighted with hysterical emotion, every speech that might have revealed something useful is suddenly interrupted by a random scream or gasp or spectacular entrance, and there is one actual instance of a character fainting dead away from general overdose of atmosphere.

And that would be bad enough, in that having read this I will be more likely to find self-parody in other Carr novels as well, but that's not all; the book also has a lousy moral. At the end Gideon Fell and the police have discovered the identity of the murderer, but they decide to keep it a secret (and to badger the victim's one ally into keeping it a secret at well).

This is because the murderer is a nice person (well, except for the murder thing), and the victim wasn't nice; was in fact a cynic and a bit of a sadist, who disliked people in general, and enjoyed seeing them mess up. She hadn't actually done anything notably evil or illegal, but she had (or at least we think she probably had) enjoyed seeing some nice people mess up their love-lives, and had perhaps even encouraged them to do so, or at least not stopped them from doing so. And she had some unpleasant caricatures hanging on her walls.

Now 'scuse me, but the way I was raised nice people aren't allowed to commit murder and get away with it just because the victim was a curmudgeon, a vixen, or even a bitch. And if John Dickson Carr thinks otherwise, it means that the next time I think about reading a story of his, I'm likely to think "hm, that bastard, eh?", and maybe read something else instead.

Which is sort of too bad.