As my grandfather used to say, “Good god, it’s tough being a John Dickson Carr fan — he wrote some of the genre’s best and most enduring masterpieces, and yet the decline in his later works like Behind the Crimson Blind (1952) and The Cavalier’s Cup (1953) means that when you get to that end of his career he can prove to be frustrating and unenjoyable to read. But try The Dead Man’s Knock (1958), which at least features Dr. Gideon Fell, a character I’m sure you’ll like when you encounter him.” And, over 40 years later, his prophecy has been borne out, with The Dead Man’s Knock arresting a recent slide in quality where my Carr reading is concerned.

A series of increasingly-dangerous pranks are being played in the gymnasium of Queen’s College somewhere in New England: firstly an impression of a statue of the college’s founder is daubed in luminous paint (no, I don’t get it, either…), then someone is nearly killed by a weight dropped off a balcony above them, then one of the students is pushed into a swimming pool when they are unable to swim. As far as some people are concerned, the guilty party must be Rose Lestrange, whose sultry, disrupting presence has been felt around the college lately…but why would a woman who so openly courts controversy act under the veil of secrecy in such matters?

Before too long, the various forces at play will centre on Professor of English Literature Mark Ruthven, starting with his wife Brenda expressing a desire to leave him for a younger man. The situation worsens when, following a phone call early one morning, the discovery of a dead body in a locked room leaves Mark with the impression that Brenda is the murderer. Thankfully, Dr. Gideon Fell is scheduled to visit Queen’s, drawn by the promise of notes pointing to an unwritten novel by Wilkie Collins, The Dead Man’s Knock, “about a death in a locked room, which should look like suicide but turns out to be murder”.

“Dr. Gideon Fell,” Toby repeated. “Impossible situations explained and miracles all unveiled! Isn’t that the fellow?”

What unfurls is pacey, full of incident, and, most importantly, bags of fun. The various pieces fit snugly, the explanations — while leaning into the gaudy contents of Carr’s toybox in a way perhaps not seen since the early Henri Bencolin novels — cover all the bases, and, in true classic style, the final stages make it clear just how much was being thrown in your face from the very beginning. There are also some wonderful descriptions…

The clock at Founder’s Hall went on striking through the cooling hours of the night. Dawn, if it can be called dawn in a world of mist and heavy dew, trembled on the edge of grey.

…which more than make up for the emotion scale being turned up to about 14 throughout. I read the opening section of this, up to the reveal of the impossible murder, in a single blink, and found the characters enjoyable and their relationships clearly limned without Carr needing to info-dump all over you.

It’s not perfect — the sudden change of focus at the start of chapter 11 gets Carr out of a hole purely to delay a revelation to the closing chapter, and the final stretch relies a little too much on people finding undisclosed items and putting them in their pocket for later — but I was fairly astounded to search up reviews on this and find that practically no-one has anything positive to say about it (only Curtis Evans’s review bucks the trend). Carr’s always been one to stretch the emotional responses of people, and while he might be doing it a little more than before here, some consideration much surely be given to the era in which he’s writing: one in which tortured heroines in novels of psychological suspense were put through their paces in much the same way as Mark Ruthven is here, where the canny reversed psychology Carr unfurls for one character would surely be praised to the rafters in works by Charlotte Armstrong or Margaret Millar.

That was when he first felt enemies closing in, though these enemies were only friends trying to help him.

I quite liked the locked room trick, too, which leans into the Victorian nature of Collins’s work — one character dismissing that influential writer as a “fan-whiskered son of a bitch” is, c’mon, glorious — and does a great job explaining away the many oddnesses which make the scene so unusual. Okay, the swapped book is possibly pushing things a little far, but the rest fits in superbly, and, the weird duel at the end which shows Carr’s increasing fascination with historical principles aside, gives us a great closing chapter that elucidates cleanly, intelligently, and in a way that the reader really could have seen if reading things correctly.

Okay, yes, there’s not much Gideon Fell, since he doesn’t appear until halfway through and is a background character thereafter, but I’ll even forgive Carr this, because the concentrated doses of Fell still elevate this above the other fare of this era that I’ve encountered. With adjusted expectations, I had a good time here, and after giving up on three Carrs in a row, it was a lovely reminder to keep the faith. You’re welcome to side with what seems to be the majority on this, of course, but I had a good time and am very grateful for that; now, onwards to more…!

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See also

Ben @ The Green Capsule: Is this seriously the author who published the excellent Fire, Burn one year earlier?  No, it’s the author who published Scandal at High Chimneys one year later.  I realize this is an obscure comparison, but The Dead Man’s Knock and Scandal at High Chimneys are remarkably similar books.  Both have the melodrama turned to eleven.  There’s no sense to either of them – just characters running about playing out cryptic dramas.  I suppose some of it makes sense in the end, but it never comes close to making up for what the reader is put through.

Martin Edwards: This story has a locked room element, as well as a “lost” Wilkie Collins novel, which gives the book its title. But Carr doesn’t make enough of these ingredients, and I’m afraid the result is very thin far [sic]. The characters spend too much time in neurotic squabbling, and I found myself unable to care about them, or about the mystery. This isn’t a good Carr.