And So to Murder (Black Dagger Crime Series)

Rating:
Summary: Creaky storyline and especially disappointing ending.
Review: John Dickson Carr (a.k.a. Carter Dickson) is perhaps my favorite author, and by far my favorite mystery writer, but this is one of his weaker efforts.

Although I greatly enjoyed the initial volatile banter and friction between the two main characters, who are obviously destined to fall desperately in love; and despite actually having laughed out loud while reading Carr's portrayal of the scandal that would lead to the heroine's gaining her independence; the relationship eventually became your run-of-the-mill, made-in-Hollywood romance, and the humor wasn't sustained throughout the majority of the story.

My biggest gripe, though, is that the solution to the mystery is wholly unbelievable and leaves far too much to chance. Any faithful reader of Carr knows that he is the master of the locked room mystery, describing impossible murders and other crimes, yet eventually revealing how easily it all was done and pointing out all the clues that were provided to the reader along the way. How many times have I read one of his books only to kick myself at the end for not having remembered such obvious details.

Here, there's none of that. First, despite the title, no one is murdered, which is not an absolute necessity, of course, but the murder attempts were not satisfactory reading. Too often I thought what a slipshod job the assassin was doing. I (and I suspect most mystery readers) prefer a clever murderer who makes very few mistakes and might just outwit his foes.

Second, instead of subtly steering the reader down the wrong path as is his general custom, here Carr tricks the reader in a way that left me feeling cheated when the solution was revealed.

What's more, in the majority of Carr's works, the reader comes to believe that the suspect is so-and-so, and Carr knows precisely what the reader is thinking, having guided him to just such a conclusion through subconscious machinations. He then mocks the reader by seamlessly fitting into the storyline some character's observation that so-and-so obviously cannot be suspected because of such-and-such which happened 30 pages prior. Reading this book, I suspected everyone and no one and for no reason in particular.

Finally, as previously stated, the solution was too iffy. The near murder at the end demanded too much planning, attention to detail and observation of human nature from such a clumsy would-be killer as ours. It is too hard to believe that he/she wouldn't have been caught long before by trippin over his/her own shoelaces.

For the end-all-be-all in murder mysteries, I highly recommend John Dickson Carr's "The Three Coffins" and "The Crooked Hinge," both of which are masterpieces of the genre and will have the reader banging his head when the solutions are revealed.

Rating:
Summary: soap opera! foul play!
Review: This so-called detective novel is totally a badly-written soap opera, whose limited detection content can be compressed into at most 10 pages. And even as a soap opera, it is a stale one. It begins with a young lady and a young man, who did not know each other but hated each other's guts so much that even one with the least imagination will know that they were bound to fall in love at first sight. Besides, the characters are all stereotyped. Having read so many books by Carr and Christie, I really start to believe that all young ladies and young men in 1930's or 40's were casted from some models. I just can't help comparing every detective story with Sherlock Holmes. There is really no necessity of fully developed supporting characters in detective stories. Unfortunately, only Doyle and very few others realized this fact.

While the story is worse than average, the detection is simply foul play. I don't remeber when Holmes amused himself at readers' expense, but in this novel, when readers have made up their own conclusion, Sir H.M. dragged out someone, whose alibi was collaborated by H.M. himself. Then H.M. shamelessly claimed that he did so in order to see what the person was up to.

Then the mechanism of the crime is unbelievable. The murderer deliberately played with a Players cigarette to poison someone who did not smoke English cigarette, or at lease, was known to smoke another brand. Although the victim accidentally borrowed a PLAYERS, did the murderer have foresight to see it would be a PLAYERS or was the murderer equipped with funny cigarettes in every brand of both continents?