The White Priory Murders by Carter Dickson

Plot:Sir Henry Merrivale’s favorite sex siren, Marcia Tait has been murdered. She is found bludgeoned to death in a room called the Queen’s mirror, which was the 17th Century trysting place for King Charles II. Queen’s mirror is surrounded by a frozen lake if anyone steps on it then the ice would crack and that person would die a freezing death. Entry and exit to the room is restricted by only a pavilion, which is covered by snow.

Now, what is baffling the police is that there is only one set of footprints which leads towards the room. So, how did the murderer managed to escape without leaving another set of footprints?

And like in all murder mysteries there is another murder and that too of the most likely suspect.

HM and the newly promoted Chief Inspector Master’s investigate the White Priory Murders.

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. 

The Red Widow Murders by Carter Dickson

Lord Mantling owns an old and decaying mansion in London, in that Mansion there is a particular room. A sinister room which has caused the death of various friends and family of the Mantling's. The terror of that room claimed its first victim back in 1803 when the body of the victim was found with his face discolored, it was immediately attributed to poisoning, and then over the years the room kept on killing and got its infamous name The Red Widow Chamber. The Legend of the room is that anybody who goes into it alone dies within a couple of hours.

Lord Mantling's father got the room locked up after another death 30 years ago, now before this decaying mansion is taken down. Mantling wants to open the room and sit inside for 2 hours, a test of the testosterone but there are other suitors for the red widow so in the end it is decided that they will draw cards and whoever gets the highest will sit in the room alone for 2 hours.

An unobtrusive man draws the ace of spades/ the death card and moves in the room to spend 2 hours, it is decided that people sitting outside will call him after every 15 minutes to check whether is alright or not. The room itself has two entrances the front door and a french window which is barred and the screws so tight, that opening it would require a superhuman effort.

2 hours pass and the assemblage sitting outside keep on calling and the voice at the other end keeps on responding. At the end of the 2 hours the man is asked to come out of the room and have a drink but there is no one who responds, they hurry towards the red widow chamber and found the man lying dead. How can it be? no one came in as the entrance was watched and no one came out, on searching they find the room empty without any vestige of a man or a demon.

But the real twist in the tale is that when the Doctor arrives and declares the man to have been dead for over an hour, no one can fathom who or what was replying from the room if this man has been dead for over an hour?? HM is at site present as an independent witness. who must now solve one of the most scary and obscure cases of his career.

Review: I think that the abstract above speaks for the mystery. It is quite bewildering and engrossing, This is one of the best Carr's I have read and the best part is that the solution is easy to understand unlike the Hollow Man. HM is at his witty best, there is one part in the book which will have you in splits this is where Chief Inspector Masters explains to HM and the rest of the crew on how he thinks the murder was done, this is especially hilarious as the old man gets pissed off cause of Master's antics.

The Characters in the Mansion are extremes some have been drawn well others haven't been given much book space. I for one would have like to see more book space for the prima donna.

Also I felt that the book could have been a tad smaller that what it was.

The eerie ambiance that Carr creates around the room and the history/legend of the room can be immediately felt by the user.

I was impressed by the amount of research that Carr must have done for this book like the part about the French revolution or the part about the Sanson family(official executioners of France) or the very riveting little part about Ventriloquism.

Strong Buy!

Ratings:

Where do I get this: Unfortunately this is not in print and very difficult to find, try infibeam or that relative in NY or London.

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!