He Wouldn't Kill Patience

Rating:
Summary: OK
Review: This book is a combination of a locked-room mystery and a Romeo-Juliet style romance. As a mystery, it introduced a new usage of a common household equipment, and a least suspected murderer, who is also the most unpleasant person in the book. Readers surely won't be quite disappointed.

A weakness in many of Carr's novels is that Carr cannot well connect the criminal and his/her mechanism. (This also presents in the book "Nine and Death Makes Ten", which I recently reviewed.) Detective story seems just a media for Carr to present his various tricks. The trick itself can be done by anyone. After revealing the trick, Carr then presents some observation, which easily leads to a very obvious conclusion, to identify the criminal. Unlike in Sherlock Holmes, or even Poirot, each observation leads to many possiblities, among which only some partially contribute to the final conclusion, the greatness of the detective is that only he can logically indentify the useful deductions and piece them together. Thus, detective stroy readers would naturally question: why bother to find out how it was done when it easily know who did it.