The Arabian Nights Murder by John Dickson Carr

Dr Gideon fell, is brought face to face with his most bizarre case yet, nothing makes sense . Why would an old man jump off an Oriental museum wall and accuse a police officer of malevolent machinations and then try to punch him? The police man defends himself and knocks down the old timer, he goes for help and when comes back finds that the old blighter has disappeared. Later, when an inspector opens the door of a carriage to investigate some strange goings-on in the museum, a dead body jumps out at him and protruding from his chest is a Persian dagger,  also it has fake whiskers on its chin and a cookbook clutched in his hand.
what does all this mean? with a plethora of strange characters and incidents, Dr fell systematically unravels this mystery wrapped like an onion.

Review: The only way to read this book is after getting drunk, the plot is unnecessarily confusing, and a lot of things which have very low odds of happening, end up happening together to irritate and disconcert the reader.

Hag's Nook by John Dickson Carr

 Martin Starberth has to spend one hour in a desolate prison cell all alone, on doing this he would inherit the Chatterham prison whom his forefathers have governed for many generations, but Martin's well wishers fear for him. Their fears are based on terrible antecedences of the Starberth male heirs. Anthony Starberth was the original governor of the prison and had it built on the blood and dead bodies of the prisoners. Anthony was a sadistic prison warden who kept his prisoners in abysmal conditions, with little or no light the prisoners of the Chatterham prison had to fight for their food with giant rats.

Anthony Starberth used to watch the hangings from his balcony, which was directly above a well in which the lifeless bodies of the dead were disposed to rot for eternity. One unforgettable night Anthony Starberth was himself found dead over the edge of the well, one of the spikes round the circumference of the well had gone straight through his heart.

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

G.K. Chesterton was greatly inspired by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. In 1911 Chesterton created Father Brown, a Catholic Priest who is the complete opposite of Sherlock Holmes. While Holmes used deduction and logic to solve tenebrous cases, the cleric Father Brown used intuitive and sympathetic worldliness to solve mysteries. Father Brown in most stories is accompanied by a master thief turned detective Hercule Flambeau.


The Innocence of Father Brown is a collection of short stories which were published in 1911. There are 12 stories of whose capsule reviews and plot summary you can see below.

The Blue Cross - The famous master criminal Flambeau is in London and he is being tracked down by Valentin himself, the head of the Paris Police and the most famous investigator of the world. Valentin who is searching for Flambeau all over London notices some very queer incidents involving two priests and decides to follow them. These bizzare incidents might be the work of a lunatic or of a brilliant, eccentric amateur sleuth.
We get introduced to Father Brown and also to Flambeau. Father Brown in his own stories is self effacing, he is of the Miss Marple category of detectives and not Poirot or Sir Henry Merrivale. A nice introduction to Father Brown stories.

The Problem of the Green Capsule aka The Black Spectacles by John Dickson Carr

 Plot: A mad man/woman poisons chocolates in a tobacco shop in the quaint village of Sodbury cross, which leaves a child dead and few others terribly sick. Marcus Chesney's niece is suspected of the crime but Chesney does not agree with these suspicions.

Marcus Chesney is a man with many idiosyncrasies. One of which is, he believes that eye witnesses are unreliable. Marcus postulates that people are poor observers and can seldom narrate simple incidents reliably. He wants to prove this to his family and friends, who often disagree with him.

To prove his theory he sets up an elaborate charade where he sets up everything as series of traps to confuse and vex the audience. During his Pantomime, an insect like man wearing dark glasses enters the stage and makes Marcus swallow a green pill. The audience think that this part of a preconceived plan. The only problem is that Marcus ends up dead after a few minutes and the person who was supposed to play the part of the Phantom or the man who looked like a "giant insect" is also found critically injured.

Chesney's theory becomes fact. There are witnesses but all have conflicting stories to tell and even the camera which caught the whole thing seems unreliable. Dr Fell is called in to solve the problem of the green capsule.

Review: Children getting poisoned, really? is this something that you would want to read. I mean this isn't something that happens only in fiction. Crimes against children are very common and in a recent TV program called "Satyamev Jayate" perhaps the eyes of a whole nation of hypocrites were opened. But we are not here to talk about real crimes we are here to talk about fiction. 

Till Death Do Us Part by John Dickson Carr

Till Death Do Us Part by John Dickson Carr

Dick Markham is one lucky fellow. He is a local celebrity and a successful play writer, he is also engaged to the beautiful, rich, 28 year old girl(who does not look a day over twenty) called Lesley Grant. Life could not get better for Dick. The two of them attend a local fair and Lesley insists on seeing the fortune teller alone. She is apparently unaware that the fortune teller is being played by Sir Harvey Gilman, the Home Office pathologist and expert on crime. After her conspicuous meeting with the fortune teller Lesley looks visibly perturbed. Dick confronts the fortune teller about the same and just as the fortune teller is about to make Dick Privy to a secret about Lesley Bang!  There is a shot fired and Sir Harvey Gilman is shot through the back accidentally by Lesley.

Later, Dick gets a call from the local GP's home. There he meets the convalescing Sir Harvey Gilman. Sir Harvey has dark deep secrets about Lesley. Sir Harvey tells Dick Diabolical tales about Lesley's Antecedence, he tells him that she has been married twice and engaged once and all three suitors were found dead in a locked room. All three of them committed suicide by injecting themselves with Prussic Acid. Woha! also the sweet innocent looking Lesley is actually 41 years old!

The Case of the Constant Suicides by John Dickson Carr

Dr Alan Campbell a Scot, who has never been to Scotland gets a letter inviting him to meet others members of his Clan following the death of a family member. The departed soul is of Angus Campbell, a man who has plunged to his death from the window of a  locked bedroom chamber atop a tower. The insurance agent calls it a suicide but Angus's relatives call it murder. The perplexing question to be asked is how can someone murder a man who is alone in a locked room bolted from inside, and the only window to the room is inaccessible from both below and top. The relatives come up with their own conundrum which is the discovery of a dog carrier bag under the bed of Angus, the relatives contemplate that something could have escaped from the bag that would have led Angus to jump in sheer fright from the soaring high tower.

Meanwhile these questions linger on, there is another suicide attempt off the tower and a third locked room suicide, making this a Case of Constant Suicides for Dr. Gideon Fell.

Review:

The Master of the locked room Returns! For me reading Carr books releases the same endorphins as sex or chocolates. His books have everything which a being like me wants to pass over time in this world full of  otherwise mundane and monotonous sources of leisure. An Impossible Crime, eccentric and aged detectives, hint of the supernatural, mystery and magic. Enough with the Carr encomiums, lets do the book review.

The Hollow Man aka The Three Coffins by John Dickson Carr

A murder has been committed on the Cagliostro street by an invisible killer, there were witnesses and yet they saw nothing, there was snowfall and yet no footprints and there were whispers but no clue as to who spoke them.

But then there is another murder and this one even more baffling. Professor Grimaud a man who studies the Supernatural is found shot in his room by an apparition who wore a child mask and had black hair which look like they were made of paper mache. 

A few days before Professor Grimaud is murdered, he is threatened by a strange man who reminds him something about his past. Petrified and worried the professor does something strange, he goes out and buys a large painting of three graves with the backdrop of a gigantic tree in an unknown country. Was the professor trying to protect himself by a charm?

The murderer had locked the professor in a room with only two entrances, a door which is being watched by two witnesses and a Window 50 foot high. After shooting, when the door of the room is broken down there is no sign of the murderer. He could not have gotten out of the door as there were two witnesses who swear they saw the childish mask wearing apparition go inside but not come outside, then there is the impossible situation of the Window, which is 50 foot high and anyone jumping outside the Window would surely leave footsteps outside on the snow but there are none. so when the poor professor is found shot in his study he is alone and there is no trace of the killer who is lighter then air and is surely the Hollow man.

Dr. Fell investigates the most famous case of his career and the gives the most famous lecture in detective fiction.

Review:

The start of the story is a cracker, it is absolutely mystical and intriguing. One impossible locked room murder committed under creepy circumstances by a guy who looks right out of the Halloween movies and another one in the middle of the street with witnesses who say they saw a man die but did not see the killer! The Hollow Man was voted as the best locked room mystery of all time by a panel of mystery authors and reviewers and I don't want to challenge them, but the ending and the explanation is way too complicated for me, I would have liked something a bit simpler like the Judas Window or the Reader is Warned. That said this novel has too many great things and very few negatives, for example the famous locked room lecture by Dr. Fell.

In the lecture Dr. Fell address the readers and tells them various methods in which a hermetically sealed locked room can be constructed and then challenges the reader to find out which one was used to murder Professor Grimaud.

Ratings: 4 out of 5






Where can you buy it? Infibeam or try Landmark, this is not easy to find and you might have to shell 500 bucks

He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr

Miles Hammond is invited to the meeting of the mysterious "Murder Club", the murder club meets to discuss impossible and intriguing murders and on a very rainy and mysterious Friday night it's guest speaker is Professor Rigaud, but to the surprise of Miles Hammond all members of the murder club are absent except for the speaker and a young girl, so with the lights gone and three of them sitting in a lonely dark room Professor Rigaud starts to narrate his story about Fey Seton. The red hair beauty who when walks in a room leaves all the men gasping.

Professor:

Fey Seton comes to the little french city of Chartes where she works as a secretary to the Wealthy Industrialist Howard Brookes, but wherever Fey goes rumors follow. Inevitably the young son of Mr. Brookes falls for Fey but the Sr. Brookes would have none of it, having heard some very disturbing stories about Fey, Mr Brookes decides to bribe Fey out of love and arranges a meeting on top of an old stone tower, Fey is seen coming down from the tower when Mr Brookes is seen well and alive on top of the tower, soon Mr. Brookes is found dead on top of the tower with just one entrance door and nobody seen going inside and no one seen going outside, there is no explanation of his murder, who entered the tower? where did they go?

The villagers do have an explanation and it is that Fey Flew to the top of the 40 foot tower!! surprised?

they say she is a Nosferatu or a Vampire!

A telephone call ends the murder club meeting abruptly, Miles Hammond goes back to his life and his Library of antique and rare books, but soon he gets a message from a job applicant for the position of a Librarian who miles wanted desperately, on inquiring Miles founds out that the Applicant has come down from France and is a tall, red haired, beautiful woman called "Fey Seton"!

Review: You start reading the novel and you begin to realize what a master Carr is. Carr weaves the supernatural into the fabric of the book so well that you feel that you are reading a horror story where the explanation of the murder cannot be anything but Supernatural, the book is from the Gideon Fell Series.

Who is Gideon Fell? he is an amateur sleuth who is an expert on locked room crimes, he is the fictional hero of the greatest locked room mystery of all time "The hollow man" where in chapter 17 Fell gives a full lecture on the how locked room murders might be committed.

Where can you buy this: Flipkart or Infibeam will cost around 550 bucks

Ratings: 4.5 stars, do not miss this!