Fatal Descent (Dover Mystery Classics)

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Dickson, Carter

Rhode, John

Mystery

Dover Pubns

Skeleton in the Clock

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Leisure Books

A Graveyard to Let

Shortly after leaping into his swimming pool and vanishing without a trace, American arts patron and accused embezzler Frederick Manning is found dead in a nearby graveyard and his old friend, British sleuth Sir Henry Merrivale, investigates

Kensington Pub. Corp

Carter Dickson (a.k.a. John Dickson Carr) is certainly the master of the locked-room mystery, a category which might as well be named after him. In "Death in Five Boxes," Carr presents not a locked-room mystery but a nonetheless apparently impossible crime. A gathering of five people ends when four of them are found unconscious and nearly dead from atropine poisoning. The fifth faired far less well; he was dead, stabbed. As the room in which the five were found was not locked, the crime should be an easy one. But there's a slight catch; it seems impossible that anyone, whether a member of the group or an outsider, could have put the poison into the drinks.Sir Henry Merrivale, Carr's best character, is determined to solve the crime, though, and he naturally does so. Along the way, we learn that the five people who were at the table have many secrets, all of which only serve to cloud the mystery."Death in Five Boxes" is an excellent novel for those who would like to be able finally to solve one of Carr's puzzles. The solution is perhaps the most obvious of any of his novels or short stories, though it should be pointed out that "obvious" and Carr's name do not lend themselves to use in the same paragraph. The novel might be better for aspiring mystery novelists. With such a (relatively) obvious solution, the book becomes an exercise in the mastery of hiding the obvious. Though the novel is far from Carr's best, either as a simple story or as an impossible mystery, the way in which this undisputed master goes about hiding the truth while playing entirely by the rules is something to behold.

Death in Five Boxes

BANTAM BOOKS

1st edition 1987 Hogarth trade paperback vg condition. In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Lord of the Sorcerers (Hogarth Crime)

Vintage/Ebury (A Division of Random House Group)

And So to Murder (Scarlet Dagger Large Print)

Chivers North Amer

And So to Murder (Scarlet Dagger Crime)

Chivers North America

When British stage star Bruce Ransom agrees to play the role of multiple wife-murderer Roger Bewlay, he becomes the suspect of a homocide occurring in the town of Aldebridge shortly after his arrival

My Late Wives

And So to Murder (Black Dagger Crime Series)

Prescott Pr

Sir Henry Merrivale investigates the disappearance of Lady Helen Loring, who had just returned from Egypt with an ancient lamp bearing a terrible curse

Curse of the Bronze Lamp

Carroll & Graf Pub.

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Books by Dickson, Carter