Department D3 of Scotland Yard houses the gargantuan form of Colonel March, investigator of the absurd and apparently impossible whose “mind is so obvious that he hits it every time”. It’s a shame March never got a novel of his own, because he has a lovely and direct way of dealing with the problems brought to him, but then he’s not exactly dissimilar to the Gideon Fell chap about whom Carter Dickson wrote so much under his real name of John Dickson Carr. So, yup, it’s impossibilities ahoy as we go through ten cases of the inexplicable thoroughly laid to rest by Carr’s own brand of chicanery and misdirection; it’s true: life is good to us sometimes, and we just gotta enjoy it when it happens…
‘The New Invisible Man’ kicks us off with a shooting by gloves that come to life and pick up a gun of their own accord — worry not, it’s a different solution to the similar-sounding novel The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940) — only for the body to disappear, the people involved to deny any knowledge of it happening, and the apparent victim to have already been dead for several decades. It’s a good little problem, superbly motivated, but I feel the idea is better than the explanation; I get it in principle, but not practice, and feel like there’s something missing to make it as clear as it needs to be (which is a nice way of saying that I’m not sure it’d completely work as described).
Faring much better is ‘The Footprint in the Sky’ with its all-the-evidence-points-to-one-person footprints-in-the-snow problem. There’s one awesome piece of subtle clewing here that’s so, so clever and almost makes up for the fact that the tiny cast makes it difficult to hide who is guilty (you’ll doubtless seize on the key piece of information even when Carr drops it so casually into proceedings). I also love how our heroine wakes up, feels something is amiss, and hears ominous voices downstairs, but must first rush through her morning toilet before going downstairs to find out what’s happening. Aaaah, society, how far you’ve fallen…
Then we have a disappearing room and the riddle of a raincoat turned inside-out in ‘The Crime in Nobody’s Room’. The setup and workings here require a level of artifice which, for me, no-one could manage more easily than Carr; it hinges on an unlikely requirement of a set of flats, and if anyone else from this era had tried to sell it to you I can believe a vast majority of readers would send it back on grounds of sheer ludicrosity. Carr makes it work, though, with his suave authority and the beautiful lightness of his tone. It’s fine as a story — nothing spectacular, mind — and hinges on another of those obscure little cluster-bombs of inspiration that went off inside the great man’s head once in a while, but you’re not going to love it for all time.
Next up, Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ reimagined with ill-gotten cash in ‘Hot Money’ — piles of stolen filthy lucre vanish in a room when the door is under observation and the windows don’t open, and a search of the entire premises fails to turn up the dough. Your enjoyment of this depends exclusively on how much you’re able to buy into the scheme used, and while I like it — I did the thing March suggests at one point, and failed to come up with the key thing (yeah, that’s vague) — it’s also not really especially Carrian. Crofts could have written it, except no-one gets on a train; Ngaio Marsh would delight her fans with this kind of idea; we hold Carr to a higher standard.
Itching for a seemingly-impossible murder where the main suspects have an alibi? Your time has come with ‘Death in the Dressing Room’. Unfortunately it’s a touch transparent and third-tier as a mystery plot, but this does enable you to appreciate just how sublime Carr’s prose is in spite of the odd turn of phrase (a “super-pickpocket”, anyone? Thought not). When he’s good, though, he’s oh-so-very good; I mean, “The hot, smoky room swallowed him up as though he were padded into layers of cotton wool”: c’mon, that’s simply beautiful.
Fun fact, ‘The Silver Curtain’ was the first Carr short story I ever read. I loved it then, and I love it still now: a man enters a cul-de-sac, approaches one of the houses and, in the space a split second while someone observing him glances away, is stabbed in the back by an assailant who somehow ran up to him, jammed a knife in his back, and vanished without being seen at any point. Not only are the mechanics very good indeed, the titular curtain is also used to perfect effect. One of those lovely, compact pieces of construction that has more going on that some novels of over ten times the length, but manages to be clear and fair at the same time.
And then, as if to underline how much of a one-trick pony he isn’t (because, y’know, we were all thinking it), the oddly-titled ‘Error at Daybreak’ does another impossible stabbing in the back, throwing in so many little esoteric ideas and suspicions among our five-strong cast that you’re almost spoiled for choice. And even then Carr manages something of a triple-whammy solution that ties in a goodly few aspects without, again, ever needing to become needlessly complex to shade inconsistencies or flaws from you. There’s one sizeable coincidence, but arguably the same effect could be achieved without it, so I’m willing to let that slide.
At this point in proceedings, Colonel March and the whole Department of Queer Complaints framing vanishes, and the remaining three stories have nothing to do with either.
‘The Other Hangman’ reads a bit like a Frontiers of the Old West yarn, with a ne’er-do-well crook in a small town due to be hanged following the murder of one of his associates. It’s not an impossible crime — which is fine, Carr excelled at all sorts of shenanigans — and ends with the kind of flourish that makes it feel like an Erle Stanley Gardner take on these circumstances. And for all its cleverness in this regard, it’s a shame that there’s not an extra little twist that seems to be winking out at you from the situation as presented, but I suppose Carr wasn’t trying to tell that kind of story.
Then we have ‘New Murders for Old’, which shows Carr wearing his Poe influences at their most brazen and consequently struggles to find its feet amidst these veridical swipes at illusion. Overworked millionaire sent on a recuperating 8 month cruise, returns to find an (in fiction, at least) unsurprising turn of events in his absence…so far, so fine. The addition of a ghostly figure stalking our hero is equally fine, as is the implication of the final line, but the difficulty there is one of something between coincidence and convenience on two fronts. Carr has the skill to explain this way in a paragraph and doesn’t, so you’re left feeling weirdly unsatisfied.
Finally, Carr flexes some historical brawn with ‘Persons or Things Unknown’, in which a centuries-old murder is recounted for the delectation of dinner guests. It’s rather slower-paced than the others, but you can see Carr’s frank fascination with the history of the 17th century bleeding through, and this multiple stabbing when there’s no weapon present is nicely-clewed and has a very enjoyable solution. Its one of those ideas that is all the better for being encountered after 13 pages rather than 300, but I really liked it. It’s also suitably creepy in atmosphere and ends on a lovely little note of acknowledged unease that rounds the collection out in fitting style.
So, overall about the mix you’d expect; Carr’s prose renders even the tamest of these stories eminently readable, so that a disappointment here is typically a star or so better if by anyone else. I believe a couple more March stories show up in The Men Who Explained Miracles collection, and of course there’s the curious miscasting that is Boris Karloff as an eyepatched, rake-thin March in the Colonel March of Scotland Yard TV series still to track down, so it’s nice not to be done with the old ragamuffin just yet. This collection is definitely worth a look if you can track it down, but since that’s true of everything Carr wrote I guess I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know…
The Invisible Event 
The March series is currently on the Talking Pictures TV channel (the eye patch apparently an error after reading the description of his “bland eye” for “blind” – or so the story goes. Great review JJ – and yeah, you should get MEN WHO EXPLAINED MIRACLES just for the excellent HM novella, ALL IN A MAZE, which is terrific.
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Fear not — I have THWEM ready to go, but it’s my understanding that one of the storues there was expanded up into a novel I want to say The Gilded Man…?), and so I would like to read whetever novel that is before taking on the collection. Also, I’d been looking for TDoQC for so long that, when I finally got a copy — for Christmas, no less! — I could barely restrain myself from reading it for a moment longer than necessary.
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Yes, one of the stories in TMWEM namely The Incautious Burglar (a Dr. Fell story) became the basis for the Merrivale novel The Gilded man.
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Beautiful, thanks. I just need to remember this now…
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I’m holding off on The Door to Doom for similar reasons – I believe it has a number of solutions that are used in the full length novels. Better to spoil a 13 page story than a 180 page book.
My approach right now is to hold off on the short story compilations until the very end. If I end up hitting too many duds with the later year books, I can always weave some short stories in there.
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My edition contains one more non-March story Blind Man’s Hood giving a total of 11 stories.
Yes, 2 other March stories William Wilson’s Racket and The Empty Flat appear in The Men Who Explained Miracles collection.
All 9 Colonel March stories appear in Merrivale, March and Murder collection.
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So, is Merrivale, March and Murder simply a collection of stories already published elsewhere? Are there any “new” stories in there at all?
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There are 3 new stories in Merrivale, March and Murder not collected elsewhere: The Diamond Pentacle, Scotland Yard’s Christmas and Lair Of The Devil Fish (radio play).
All other stories have been taken from Department Of Queer Complaints, The Men Who Explained miracles and The Third Bullet And Other Stories.
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Okay, cool — always good to know how much new material one is getting in this kind of thing; not worth paying over the odds if you already have most of the contents!
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If you can track down a reasonably priced copy then I’d say Merrivale, March and Murder is worth getting. Aesthetically, it’s a nice book, looks good on a shelf, and has enough material all collected in one volume to make a difference. Of course if you do go down that route, you’ll probably feel the need to pick up copies of Fell and Foul Play and The Door to Doom for the sake of completeness. 🙂
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Good to have someone pitch in an say it’s worth finding, thanks Colin. And, alas, ‘completeness’ and ‘Carr’ go hand-in-hand as far as I’m concerned; not quite to the extent of every edition of every book, that would be insane, but as far as more than one edition of some of them, sure… And still a few to find!
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Unfortunately Merrivale, March, and Murder and Fell and Foul Play seem to be pretty hard to track down for a decent price. For that matter, The Department of Queer Complains seems a bit elusive as well.
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Oh, yeah, I’d been holding out for TDoQC for a while, it seems rather rare; someone gave me this copy for Christmas, so it was bonanza time as far as I was concerned!
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This sounds like an awesome collection! I have The Silver Curtain, which I loved, in one of my favourite short story collections ‘The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories’, which also contains The House in Goblin Wood, and Ronald Knox’s Solved by Inspection, which is one of my favourite locked room stories and premises.
And I was very thankful to find a copy of ‘The Second Century of Detective Stories’ in a market in Brighton and bought it solely for Error at Daybreak. Really loved that one, and felt as you said there are so many ideas, and the setting itself is so well described.
I’m slightly annoyed that you reviewed those two the highest and I already have them (!) but I am still keen to grab this collection at some point. Disappearing rooms, and possessed gloves are too good-a premise not to try out.
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At the end of last year I started a book-buying embargo because, well, my TBR pile is ridiculous. Literally the second day of “No, no, I’m not buying any books at all, no matter what” I found an Alfred Hitchcock short story collection containing ‘The Other Hangman’ and an Arthur Porgess story…and managed to resist buying it, much to a mixture of pride and incredulity. So having TOH turn up in here was some relief on that front…
‘The Footprint in the Sky’ and ‘Persons or Things Unknown’ are great stories, too. The solution of the second one bears some discussion, I’m sure, because it’s both audaciously brilliant and hugely unlikely, but I love the sheer cojones involved in that being his answer: the clewing is hilarious, once you get into it, and it’s a great piece to end the collection on.
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TThis reminds me of the start of one of Christie’s shorts ‘The Double Clue’. The first character introduced is Marcus Hardiman: ‘His hobby was collecting. He had the collector’s soul.’
I think this is true for so many of us blogging on here!
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I was looking forward to this review as I wanted to see how this collection compared to Roy Vicker’s slightly later work The Department of Dead Ends, which has a remarkably similar overall structure. Do wonder whether Vickers might have been copying just a little bit? Both collections seem fairly mixed in terms of quality thought I think you gave this collection a higher rating than I did Vicker’s work.
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I, to, have read the Vickers collection, and hadn’t made the link, but you’re right that they bear similarities in principle: both are kind of ‘lost cause’ departmenrts where things get passed when no-one else knows what to do with them. I definitely found this to be the superior collection, since the Vickers stories get a bit ridiculous after the first few — in a way, Dead Ends are impossible crime stories because you find yourself going, “Bullshit, it’s impossible that so many conincidences could come together to enable that chain of reasoning…” 🙂
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A long time since I’ve read this one, and you’re now making me want to track down a copy!
There are episodes of the TV series all over YouTube.
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Aaah, lovely YouTube. It speaks of my age that it neve occurs to me to look there for TV stuff — good stuff, thanks for reminding me.
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It speaks of my age
Young whippersnapper!
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Hollywood Twenty-One, mate 😀
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Your review is a painful reminder that I only read the stripped down version of this collection, which omitted “The Other Hangman,” “New Murders for Old” and “Persons or Things Unknown.” As mentioned here before, there’s one other collection that has “Blind Man’s Hood” as an additional story, but none of them has “The Empty Flat” or “William Wilson’s Racket.” It’s a publishing history that makes little sense and a new (complete) collection would be more than welcome.
Glad to see I am not the only one who loves “The Silver Curtain.” I recommend watching the TV adaptation, because, for a low-budget series, they managed to cleverly translate the trick to the small screen.
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So are ‘The Empty Flat’ and ‘William Wilson’s Racket’ uncollected, then?
And, yeah, ‘The Silver Curtain’ could actually be a good place to start with the TV show — it’s a visual trick that it’d be interestin to see pulled off, since it’s so vivid in the mind when you read how it was done. I shall get looking…
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“So are ‘The Empty Flat’ and ‘William Wilson’s Racket’ uncollected, then?”
No. As mentioned above by me, these 2 March stories are available in 2 collections: The Men Who Explained Miracles and Merrivale, March And Murder.
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Yes, sorry, having a bit of a brain freeze today… 🙂
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‘The Crime in Nobody’s Room’ was the first thing I ever read by Carr. I came across it in one of those anthologies by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Perhaps not the greatest story he has ever written, but nonetheless wonderful atmosphere and very enjoyable overall.
‘The Silver Curtain’ is also included in “The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes”.
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It was in The Mammoth Book that I read The Silve Curtain, as it happens. And then reasd te rest of them and thought “Hmmm, surely some of these could have been replaced with more Carr stories…” 😀
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Nodding over here for your comment JJ!
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I had a few minutes and just watched “The Silver Curtain” on YouTube. The recording is not in great shape, but the show is charming, moving along at the leisurely pace of classic television. The final reveal was nice and physical as befitting the nature of the crime, and while I understand from your write-up that Boris Karloff resembles Col. March not a whit, I always enjoy Karloff as a hero and he is delightful here. A very young Arthur Hill played the dupe and went on to an illustrious career in film and TV! It’s nice to see TV shows dedicated to classic mystery stories. Like the novels and stories, the popularity of video whodunits has faded, at least in America, and that is a sad thing!
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Did you see Ho-Ling’s recent post about The Armchair Detective show they have in Japan? Two one-hour episodes for each story, and the entire second hour is spent going through the interpretations and solution! That, that is how you make a detectivew show!
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Just saw a book today that released over Christmas called Murder Under the Christmas tree. A short story collection which has in it ‘Persons or Things Unknown’! More Carr in contemporary print! Link to the book here: http://bit.ly/2kaMY4l – Has a pretty good contents actually.
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