John Dickson Carr


John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn.
Carr is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of so-called "Golden Age" mysteries; complex, plot-driven stories in which the puzzle is paramount. He was influenced in this regard by the works of Gaston Leroux and by the Father Brown stories of G. K. Chesterton. He was a master of the so-called locked room mystery, in which a detective solves apparently impossible crimes. The Dr. Fell mystery The Hollow Man, usually considered Carr's masterpiece, was selected in 1981 as the best locked-room mystery of all time by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers. He also wrote a number of historical mysteries.
A resident of England for a number of years, Carr is often grouped among "British-style" mystery writers. Most of his novels had English settings, especially country villages and estates, and English characters. His two best-known fictional detective characters were both English.
The son of Wooda Nicholas Carr, a U.S. congressman from Pennsylvania, Carr graduated from The Hill School in Pottstown in 1925 and Haverford College in 1929. During the early 1930s, he relocated to England, where he married Clarice Cleaves, an Englishwoman. He began his mystery-writing career there, returning to the United States as an internationally known author during 1948.
In 1950, his biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle earned Carr the first of his two Special Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America; the second was awarded in 1970, in recognition of his 40-year career as a mystery writer. He was also presented the MWA's Grand Master award in 1963. Carr was one of only two Americans ever admitted to the British Detection Club.
In early spring 1963, while living in Mamaroneck, New York, Carr suffered a stroke, which paralyzed his left side. He continued to write using one hand, and for several years contributed a regular column of mystery and detective book reviews, "The Jury Box", to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Carr eventually relocated to Greenville, South Carolina, and died there of lung cancer on February 28, 1977.

Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale

Carr's two major detective characters, Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, are superficially quite similar. Both are large, upper-class, eccentric Englishmen somewhere between middle-aged and elderly. Dr. Fell, who is fat and walks only with the aid of two canes, was clearly modeled on the British writer G. K. Chesterton and is at all times civil and genial. He has a great mass of untidy hair that is often covered by a "shovel hat" and he generally wears a cape. He lives in a modest cottage and does not have any official association with public authorities.
Henry Merrivale or "H.M.", on the other hand, although stout and with a majestic "corporation", is active physically and is feared for his ill-temper and noisy rages. In a 1949 novel, A Graveyard To Let, for example, he demonstrates an unexpected talent for hitting baseballs improbable distances. A wealthy descendant of the "oldest baronetcy" in England, he is part of the Establishment and in the earlier novels is the director of the British Secret Service. In The Plague Court Murders he is said to be qualified as both a barrister and a medical doctor. Even in the earliest books the bald, bespectacled, and scowling H.M. is clearly a Churchillian figure and in the later novels this similarity is somewhat more consciously evoked. Many of the Merrivale novels, written using the Carter Dickson byline, rank with Carr's best work, including the much-praised The Judas Window.
Many of the Fell novels feature two or more different impossible crimes, including He Who Whispers and The Case of the Constant Suicides. The novel The Crooked Hinge combines a seemingly impossible throat-slashing, witchcraft, a survivor of the ship Titanic, an eerie automaton modeled on Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess player, and a case similar to that of the Tichborne Claimant into what is often cited as one of the greatest classics of detective fiction. But even Carr's biographer, Douglas G. Greene, notes that the explanation, like many of Carr's in other books, seriously stretches plausibility and the reader's credulity.
Dr. Fell's own discourse on locked room mysteries in chapter 17 of The Hollow Man is acclaimed critically and is sometimes printed as a stand-alone essay in its own right.

Other works

Besides Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, Carr mysteries feature two other series detectives: Henri Bencolin and Colonel March.
A few of his novels do not feature a series detective. The most famous of these, The Burning Court, involves witchcraft, poisoning, and a body that disappears from a sealed crypt in suburban Philadelphia; it was the basis for the French movie La chambre ardente.
Carr wrote in the short story format as well. Julian Symons, in Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A History, said: "Most of Carr's stories are compressed versions of his locked-room novels, and at times they benefit from the compression. Probably the best of them are in the Carter Dickson book, The Department of Queer Complaints, although this does not include the brilliantly clever H.M. story The House in Goblin Wood or a successful pastiche which introduces Edgar Allan Poe as a detective."
During 1950, Carr wrote the novel, The Bride of Newgate, set during 1815 at the close of the Napoleonic Wars, one of the earliest full-length historical mysteries. The Devil in Velvet and Fire, Burn! are the two historical novels with which he said he himself was most pleased. With Adrian Conan Doyle, the youngest son of Arthur Conan Doyle, Carr wrote Sherlock Holmes stories that were published in the 1954 collection The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes. He was also honored by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by being asked to write the biography for the legendary author. The book, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published during 1949 and received generally favorable reviews for its vigor and entertaining style.

Critical appraisal

Dr. Fell has generally been considered to be Carr's major creation. The British novelist Kingsley Amis, for instance, writes in his essay, "My Favorite Sleuths", that Dr. Fell is one of the three great successors to Sherlock Holmes and that H.M., "according to me is an old bore." This may be in part because in the Merrivale novels written after World War II, H.M. frequently became a comic caricature of himself, especially in the physical misadventures in which he found himself at least once in every novel. Humorous as these episodes were intended to be, they also tended to have the effect of decreasing the mystique of the character. Earlier, however, H.M. had been regarded more favorably by a number of critics. Howard Haycraft, author of the seminal Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, wrote during 1941 that H.M. or "The Old Man" was "the present writer's admitted favorite among contemporary fictional sleuths". During 1938 the British mystery writer R. Philmore wrote in an article called "Inquest on Detective Stories" that Sir Henry was "the most amusing of detectives". And further: "Of course, H.M. is so much the best detective that, once having invented him, his creator could get away with any plot."
There is a book-length critical study by S. T. Joshi, John Dickson Carr: A Critical Study and a chapter on Carr in Joshi's book Varieties of Crime Fiction .
The definitive biography of Carr is by Douglas G. Greene, John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles . From an obituary published in Greenville, South Carolina, Carr allegedly also published using the name of Fenton Carter, but no works by anyone of this name have yet been identified.

Radio plays

Carr also wrote many radio scripts, particularly for the Suspense radio anthology series in America and for its UK equivalent Appointment With Fear introduced by Valentine Dyall, as well as many other dramas for the BBC, and some screenplays. His 1943 half-hour radio play Cabin B-13 was expanded into a series on CBS during 1948-49 for which Carr wrote all 25 scripts, basing some on earlier works or re-presenting devices that Chesterton had used. The 1943 play Cabin B-13 was also expanded into the script for the 1953 movie Dangerous Crossing, directed by Joseph M. Newman and featuring Michael Rennie and Jeanne Crain. Carr worked extensively for BBC Radio during World War II, writing both mystery stories and propaganda scripts. During the late 1940s he hosted Murder by Experts transmitted by Mutual radio. He introduced works by other mystery writers who were the week's guest writers. The show originated from Mutual's main station WOR in New York City. Many of these shows are available for free listening or downloading at the Internet Archive.

Film and television

Carr's works were the basis for several movies, including The Man With a Cloak and Dangerous Crossing. The Emperor's Snuffbox was filmed as That Woman Opposite, and La chambre ardente was a loose adaptation of The Burning Court.
Various Carr stories formed the basis for episodes of television series, particularly those without recurring characters such as General Motors Presents. During 1956, the television series Colonel March of Scotland Yard, featuring Boris Karloff as Colonel March, was based on Carr's character and his stories and was broadcast for 26 episodes.

Publications

[Henri Bencolin]

  1. It Walks By Night - 1930
  2. The Lost Gallows - 1931
  3. Castle Skull - 1931
  4. The Waxworks Murder - 1932
  5. The Four False Weapons, Being the Return of Bencolin - 1937

    Dr. [Gideon Fell]

  6. Hag's Nook - 1933
  7. The Mad Hatter Mystery - 1933
  8. The Eight of Swords - 1934
  9. The Blind Barber - 1934
  10. Death-Watch - 1935
  11. The Hollow Man - 1935
  12. The Arabian Nights Murder - 1936
  13. To Wake the Dead - 1938
  14. The Crooked Hinge - 1938
  15. The Black Spectacles - 1939
  16. The Problem of the Wire Cage - 1939
  17. The Man Who Could Not Shudder - 1940
  18. The Case of the Constant Suicides - 1941
  19. Death Turns the Tables - 1941
  20. Till Death Do Us Part - 1944
  21. He Who Whispers - 1946
  22. The Sleeping Sphinx - 1947
  23. Below Suspicion - 1949
  24. The Dead Man's Knock - 1958
  25. In Spite of Thunder - 1960
  26. The House at Satan's Elbow - 1965
  27. Panic in Box C - 1966
  28. Dark of the Moon - 1967

    [Sir Henry Merrivale] (as Carter Dickson)

  29. The Plague Court Murders - 1934
  30. The White Priory Murders- 1934
  31. The Red Widow Murders - 1935
  32. The Unicorn Murders - 1935
  33. The Punch and Judy Murders -1936
  34. The Ten Teacups - 1937
  35. The Judas Window - 1938
  36. Death in Five Boxes - 1938
  37. The Reader is Warned - 1939
  38. And So To Murder - 1940
  39. Murder in The Submarine Zone - 1940
  40. Seeing is Believing - 1941
  41. The Gilded Man - 1942
  42. She Died A Lady - 1943
  43. He Wouldn't Kill Patience - 1944
  44. The Curse of the Bronze Lamp - 1945
  45. My Late Wives - 1946
  46. The Skeleton in the Clock - 1948
  47. A Graveyard To Let - 1949
  48. Night at the Mocking Widow - 1950
  49. Behind the Crimson Blind - 1952
  50. The Cavalier's Cup - 1953

    [Colonel March]

  51. The Department of Queer Complaints - 1940
  52. Merrivale, March and Murder - 1991 'The Department of Queer Complaints' It contains all the COLONEL MARCH of SCOTLAND YARD stories. In the early 1950s Boris Karloff played Col. March in a weekly television series.

    Novels as John Dickson Carr