I’ve written previously about The Red Widow Murders (1935) — John Dickson Carr’s first take on the Room That Kills, originally published under his Carter Dickson nom de plume — but this American Mystery Classics reissue is a chance to look at the book more broadly and attach a star value to it. This third reading reinforced my impression that it’s perhaps too busy a book, redolent with the enthusiasm the youthful Carr brought to his early efforts when his eagerness outweighed his skill with juggling plot, but reading it three times also give me a good perspective on its many successes, not least of which is just how busy Carr manages to make it.
The core plot sees a man enter a room in which a series of historical deaths have occurred, the room having been locked up for at least one generation. In order to ensure that he is safe and well, people sitting outside the room call out to him every 15 minutes, and he replies. After two hours, the room is opened, and the man is found dead on the floor — the catch being that he’s been dead for over an hour, despite calling out that he was alive at least four times. How, then, was he killed, and how does his death tie into the history of untimely ends met within those walls?
The answer to that question is, as befits Carr in this flush of youthful vigour, both ingenious and slightly frustrating. It is also, and here’s where the busy-ness of this endeavour comes into play, hidden behind a wealth of obfuscated motives and unusual behaviour that will see one other person murder in that room while seemingly everyone else in the house was either not where they said they were or somewhere they shouldn’t be for reasons that will take a lot of getting at. Peel apart these layers and you have a very intelligent piece of imbricated plotting, but it’s undeniable that the book makes a frank mountain out of the molehill of basic plot which it should be pursuing.
In Carr’s favour is that he is beginning to display a real talent with his use of language (“She picked her words with the care of a woman seeking ripe fruit in a basket.”), his small character touches…
“I admire your frankness, my friend,” said Arnold, who obviously detested frankness in anyone but himself.
…his flashes of humour (“You’re the gal who’s engaged to Hippocrates Erectus…”), and the clear delight he’s having at painting bloody history as the background against which to hold up this modern tableau of baffling slaughter (it can’t be said enough: the opening to chapter nine is exquisite). Carr, a disciple of Arthur Conan Doyle, is perhaps never more playful than in his ‘more tales in the canon’-baiting footnote about “the murder of the American millionaire, Richard Morris Blandon, at the Royal Scarlet Hotel in Piccadilly, and the singular puzzle of the triple impersonation”. You also have to love the way one character confidently and baselessly asserts that the secret of the deaths is down to “either gases or spiders” — it’s in moments like these that a far sleeker, lighter, better book peeks out at you.
Against Carr is that tendency to complicate, not least in his building — the book is two chapters too long, and contains at least two characters who bring precisely zero to proceedings, to the extent that I (reading this for the third time, remember) occasionally forgot they were there — and, crucially, in some of his unpacking. A few of the explanations don’t compel, and the history of supposed riches which drives much of the death herein feels like a Macguffin from an earlier, less rigorous age. There are so many cross-currents here that it can be difficult to keep track of the who-was-where-when, and while the toybox of false solutions is pulled out time and again to Carr’s delight, the average reader is liable to be left a little pie-eyed at all the contradictions.
Still, the second death is very well-motivated, and our killer actually pretty intelligent (“Dartmoor is full of the clever ones…”), with certain of H.M.’s deductions come the end feeling a little like he knows the answer because the author does than because of any inherent flaw in the killer’s plan. Amusing, too, to see Carr lay out here the essential hook for another of H.M.’s cases, Seeing is Believing, a.k.a. Cross of Murder (1941) some six years before that book would see the light of day. In a way, this feels like it comes too soon, being better appreciated when you have a good overview of Carr’s career, rather than being read near the beginning, and perhaps only really hitting the right notes with many readers after being read more than once. I’m glad I’ve returned to it multiple times, but I’ll definitely leave it alone for several years before trying it again.
A quick mention, too, for Tom Mead’s excellent introduction to this edition, which does a superb job of appreciating Carr and putting the man’s incredible output in the appropriate context. An introducer who has an affinity with the contents and context of the book they’re writing about really does a make a difference, and Mead’s work here is among the best done in this series.
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See also
Ben @ The Green Capsule: This could have easily been Carr’s masterpiece. Could have… The atmosphere is gripping – possibly his best. The puzzle is mind bending – possibly his best. The pace is riveting – again, possibly his best. Similar to The Judas Window, each successive chapter seems to include its own shattering revelations. There is even a long fascinating passage set in the time of the French Revolution, dripping with Carr’s usual historical details.
The Invisible Event 
I recently read this one for the first time and found it largely frustrating. I was impressed with the actual solution to the locked-room puzzle (and with the earlier chapter when the police inspector triumphantly demonstrates a plausible but false explanation). But the attempts to gothic up the proceedings with the “curse” and all the guillotine stuff didn’t work for me; I found it more tedious than atmospheric and kept waiting for Carr to get back to the point! But this is only my second encounter with Carr’s work, and I’ll definitely try more — I’m sure it’s my fault, not his.
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My first read was a little like this, but it clung on in the back of my memory and I returned to it and had a better time, and then a better time again with this third reading several years on again.
I’m inclined to see this as something of a watershed tin Carr’s career, because some absolute masterpieces just started pouring out of him after this. The fact that he’s over-reaching so much here really does feel, in retrospect, like a learning moment he needed to go through in order to write the likes of Till Death Do Us Part and The Reader is Warned in the years ahead.
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You’re quite right. Insomniac that I am, I’ve used my sleepless hours to work out that Carr had six phases in his writing career, and this is the year when he left phase one (wherein the author is enthusiastic and over-reaches in trying to mesh together classic murder puzzles with gothic horror) and entered into phase two (wherein the author has learnt his trade and knows how to put his skills to good use).
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Always great to hear from you, Christian, and doubly so when you’re backing me up. Hope all’s good, dude.
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Looks like Carr was one of the few writers to actually follow up on his tantalizing descriptions of unrecorded cases! “The singular puzzle of the triple impersonation” is THE UNICORN MURDERS (which has a chapter title by that name), and murder rears its head at the Royal Scarlet Hotel in TO WAKE THE DEAD, although there’s no H.M. and no Richard Morris Blandon in the latter book.
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I am an idiot; of course it’s a reference to The Unicorn Murders — excellent spot, as with To Wake the Dead (a book I remember only because I found it disappointing…any details are, I’ll be honest, lost).
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Ah, Chapter 9. The only thing quite like it – in terms of enchanting the reader into a dizzying spiral of “wait, what book am I reading?” – is the sea captain’s tale from Anthony Boucher’s The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars.
I love everything about this book except the solution. Perhaps I’d feel differently on a second read, but this was my first let down with Carr, magnified by having reached such dizzying heights. My quote that you selected still rings true in my mind.
And my god… Seeing is Believing was published a mere six years later? Most all of Carr’s reputation (in my mind) was published during that period, and while the math on the timespan seems obvious now that you mention it, it feels like a mountain of books. And it was, at the rate that he was publishing, but what astonishing quality!
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The solution becomes less frustrating when you know it’s coming — a distinct benefit when, yes, it’s such a let down first time round.
And, yes, between this and SiB we got some utter gems:
The Punch & Judy Murders
The Burning Court
The Four False Weapons
The Judas Window
The Problem of the Green Capsule
The Reader is Warned
Nine–And Death Makes Ten
The Case of the Constant Suicides
The Seat of the Scornful
More ingenuity there than many people manage in their entire careers, and we could still add another ten books to it which show Carr at the peak of the genre.
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I have read this one twice and, though I enjoyed both reads (and it ends up ranking quite high on my list of Carr’s), there is something about it that leaves me wanting. It feels like less than the sum of its parts with a unique solution and great atmosphere. But the characters fell flat for me on both readings and I could not help but feel somewhat let down by that flashback chapter. I know you find the equivalent in The Plague Court Murders tedious, but I find that a much more effective scene-setter.
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The characters don’t compel in part, I propose, because Carr is trying so hard to throw as many solutions and interpretations at you as he can (see also: how many of the people do you remember in The Poisoned Chocolates Case…?). It’s a definite flaw, but somewhat necessary since you have to believe various contradictory things about various people to allow for all the speculation and counter-speculation. A far from ideal situation, I agree.
As to the historical chapter, it feels like a more refined version of The Plague Court Murders’ one, but I might be biased simply because I enjoyed this book so much more on second and third read whereas TPCM took a serious dive in my estimation upon revisit.
Turns out we’re all human 🙂
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There is only one thing that bothers me about this book, the rest is great.
Warning, spoilers ahead. The reader is warned.
When the killer arrives at the murder scene, he destroys a clue that could give him away. But it’s impossible for him to calculate. Because under normal circumstances, the murder would have been committed long before he arrived at the house. He couldn’t have known that someone else would speak for the victim to take advantage of the murder.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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You raise an excellent point. I completely missed that — and I’ve read this three times!
Mind you, the book as a whole does feel like every single possible explanation has something new dragged across it, as if you’re constantly being distracted from possibilities. So Carr did a magnificent job writing this and only working in that one flaw 🙂
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At what point was this book republished with John Dickson Carr’s name on the cover instead of Carter Dickson’s? This edition?
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To the best of my knowledge, this is the first English publication as “by John Dickson Carr”. I find it a little odd that the AMC reprints didn’t go with Carter Dickson, or at least “JDC writing as CD”…but, well, that’s their choice 🙂
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I am late to the party reading “The Red Widow Murders”. Going into it, I found the “room that kills” set-up irresistible. At times though I found the book diffuse with too many characters, too complex of a plan by the culprit, family history back to the French Revolution injected into the middle of the book where the story dragged until its 2/3 point. Somehow I expected a gothic atmosphere (e.g., like The Burning Court where I think the history was used to better effect), but that was not the case here.
And yet … I loved this. While I might have preferred the false solution (i.e., where a thread was used), the actual one was still fun even if implausible and H.M. is in good form without the comedy high jinks. If any other author than Carr (Dickson) had written this, it might be considered a classic. If it pales, it only does so in comparison to Carr’s greatest works. That said, the ultimate compliment I can pay to TRWM is that I can see myself rereading this a few years from now. That would never happen with an average or meh book.
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Yeah, it’s a somewhat overstuffed book, but it really feels like Carr is working out a few things on the way to what’s about to become a superbly successful decade for him. I’m really pleased you had such a good time with it, because it’s dense stuff — I remembered it being far less event-heavy than it is, for one — and that’s liable to put people off.
Here’s hoping it’s not among the last of the Carr reprints we get from the AMC or the BL, too. There are still at least 10 superb Carrs that could be reprinted, so it’s to be sincerely wished that others have the same positive response and this and others sell well.
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