THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504180551
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY GORDON A. MAGNUSON
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
JOHN DICKSON CARR
The Man Who Explained Miracles
DOUGLAS G. GREENE
Otto Penzler Books. 537 pp. $35.
WITHIN A FENCED tennis court, a man lies dead, strangled. Only his footprints, no one else's, appear in the damp clay surrounding the court.
By explaining seemingly impossible crimes like this one, John Dickson Carr became an acknowledged master within the murder-mystery genre. Carr started writing locked-room mysteries when he was about 14 and created his first important detective, Frenchman Henri Bencolin, while still in college. Born in 1906 in Uniontown, Pa., Carr moved to England in 1933, where he remained for 16 years. There he went on to create two of the most important detectives of the Golden Age of mystery fiction: Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale.
With John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles, Douglas G. Greene writes a critical biography that undoubtedly will be the definitive work on Carr for years to come. Greene, a history professor and director of the Institute of Humanities at Old Dominion University, has written and edited a number of works about Carr. Blessed with the full cooperation of Carr's family and meticulous in his research, Greene reveals in this new book the fullness of the writer's life.
In the 1930s alone Carr published 28 novels and continued his endless ingenuity at locked-room puzzles. Sponsored for the newly founded Detection Club by Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L. Sayers, Carr had arrived. In America only Rex Stout and Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, respectively) were his rivals. Carr's The Three Coffins (1935), with its memorable lecture by Dr. Fell, is regarded as the finest of all locked-room novels.
While continuing to write about Fell and Merrivale, the latter under the pseudonym Carter Dickson, Carr also published a number of historical mysteries, all with strong detective elements and atmospheric effects, and an authorized biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Carr wrote 99 radio scripts for the BBC and CBS. After some wandering, he finally settled in Greenville, S.C., where he died in 1977, having published 71 novels as well as novelettes and short stories. He was honored in 1962 by the Mystery Writers of America with the Grandmaster Award.
Greene conveys Carr's life with great interest and style. Carr's ingenious plots are analyzed in detail, and Greene points out inconsistencies, unnecessary complications and unfair red herrings. Of interest, too, is Greene's commentary on Carr's growth in narration, characterization and style in the 1940s and '50s. Inevitably Carr's powers diminished, and his later work often seemed tired in narration and construction. Surprisingly, even Carr's characters complained!
Greene's discussion of plot does reveal solutions to Carr's puzzles. But the reader is warned beforehand by the inclusion of asterisks and a bold announcement. In some cases, however, Greene curiously shies away, saying that he cannot continue analysis without revealing plot.
A more puzzling part of this biography is an ``Interlude'' chapter that attempts to define detective fiction and Carr's place in it. Greene dismisses all but three histories of the genre with the abrupt words, ``they're wrong.'' Greene's own brief history, however, offers few surprises. His placement of Carr as preeminent in ``handling a complex puzzle plot'' will find few opponents.
Collectors of mystery fiction will find the bibliography of Carr's works useful, as is the information Greene gives about publication dates and sales figures. For lovers of John Dickson Carr, this biography will be the one indispensable book on his life and career.
- MEMO: Gordon A. Magnuson is a professor of English at Virginia Wesleyan
College, where he teaches a course in detective fiction. by CNB