Astoundingly, Who Killed Father Christmas? (2023) is the fifth collection of seasonal mysteries collated by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics range. And, with the BL kind enough to provide me with a review copy, it seemed like the perfect excuse to start some Christmas reading a little earlier than planned.
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The recent undoing of whatever logjam had prevented the reissuing of John Dickson Carr’s novels is a cause for much celebration among fans of classic detective fiction. It Walks by Night (1930), Castle Skull (1931), The Lost Gallows (1931), The Corpse in the Waxworks (1932), Hag’s Nook (1933), The Mad Hatter Mystery (1933), The Plague Court Murders (1934), The Crooked Hinge (1938), The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941), She Died a Lady (1943), and Till Death Do Us Part (1944), can now be bought easily for sensible money, finally providing some company for The Hollow Man (1935), which had been flying the flag in bookshops toute seule for decades now.
If you were fortunate enough to get one of the 150 hardcover editions of The Island of Coffins and Other Mysteries from the Casebook of Cabin B-13 (2020) by John Dickson Carr — and I was — you also got an additional pamphlet containing the play ‘Secret Radio’ (1944). And so, having completed my reviews of the collection proper, I turn my attention to this delightful appendix.
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The final six trips aboard the Maurevania during the Golden Age of radio, with Dr. John Fabian leading us through the apparently impossible.
Continue readingAnother six tales of intrigue from aboard cruise liner the Maurevania, with ship’s surgeon Dr. John Fabian keen to baffle and then elucidate us from his eponymous quarters.
Continue readingAnother tranche of seeming impossibilities from John Dickson Carr’s radio series Cabin B-13, tales of murder and bafflement told by Dr. John Fabian, ship’s surgeon aboard the Maurevania.
Continue readingIt is perhaps unsurprising, given the impact of John Dickson Carr’s radio play ‘Cabin B-13’ (1945) from the series Suspense, that a series of mystery and suspense plays should take that title when Carr returned to radio work. Unrelated to that original beyond apparently using the same ship — the Maurevania — as a framing device, the two series of Cabin B-13 (1948-49) nevertheless comprised half-hour problem-of-the-week plays in the same vein, related by ship’s surgeon Dr. John Fabian from his eponymous quarters
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Two weeks ago I looked at the first four plays in this collection, so let’s get on the with final five.
Continue readingIt’s fair to say that no-one has done more for the curation of John Dickson Carr’s work than Douglas G. Greene: collecting various obscure short pieces in the likes of The Door to Doom and Other Detections (1980), Merrivale, March, and Murder (1991), and Fell and Foul Play (1991), writing the staggeringly comprehensive (and recently reprinted) biography The Man Who Explained Miracles (1995), and enabling, through Crippen & Landru, publication of two — soon to be three — collections of Carr’s radio scripts edited by Tony Medawar.
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The Invisible Event 