Sat 18 Nov 2017
A 1001 Midnights Review: JOHN DICKSON CARR – Castle Skull.
Posted by Steve under 1001 Midnights , Reviews[5] Comments
by Robert E. Briney
JOHN DICKSON CARR – Castle Skull. Henri Bencolin #2. Harper & Brothers, hardcover, 1931. Reprint editions include: Pocket #448, paperback, 1947. Berkley G-412, paperback, 1959; F960, paperback, 1964. Zebra, paperback, 1987.
Carr’s writing career began with a sports column in a local newspaper at the age of fourteen. During his prep-school years at the Hill School, he was already writing locked-room stories and an Oppenheim-style serial. At Haverford College he worked on the college’s literary magazine, The Havelfordian, and it was here that the first stories about his Parisian magistrate-detective, Henri Bencolin, appeared.
When he wrote his first full-fledged mystery novel, it was only natural that he should use Bencolin as his detective. Bencolin’s debut in book form was in It Walks by Night (1930), and three other books in the series followed within the next two years.
Castle Skull is the second of Bencolin’s recorded exploits. The setting is Schloss Schadel, a castle on the Rhine River near the city of Coblenz. The castle had been the home of the world-famous magician Maleger. Some time before the start of the story, Maleger had disappeared from a railway carriage that was under constant observation; his drowned body later turned up in the Rhine.
In his will he left Castle Skull jointly to his two friends, the actor Myron Alison and the financier Jerome D’Aunay. Now Alison has been murdered in spectacular fashion: “The man’s vitality was apparently enormous. He had been shot three times in the breast, but he was alive when the murderer poured kerosene on him and ignited it. He actually got to his feet and staggered out in flames across the battlements before he fell.”
Bencolin, on vacation from his official duties, is persuaded by D’Aunay to investigate Alison’s death. He is accompanied on the case by his “Watson,” an American writer named Jeff Marle, who narrates the story.
This is the young Carr in full flight: a meticulously constructed formal detective story cloaked in extravagant melodrama and exuberantly macabre trappings, peopled by doom-laden characters. The relative smoothness and restraint of Carr’s later work is little in evidence, but there is no denying the power and fascination of the story.
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Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007. Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.
November 19th, 2017 at 7:45 am
I presume it was supposed to read “staggered out in flames” up there.
It’s been a lot of years since I read the Bencolin books – probably around 40 – but I do remember enjoying them for the atmosphere as much as the plot.
November 19th, 2017 at 8:05 am
“Flames” it is. Thanks, Jeff. I have it fixed now. If you can’t trust OCR, who can you trust?
As for Bencolin, I agree. Atmosphere galore!
November 19th, 2017 at 2:05 pm
And I missed noticing the word which was corrected to “flames.” I was probably concentrating on Bob’s fine description of this novel. It is a very long time since I read it and I recall my copy was one of those whose cover you used here. I tended to grab anything by John Dickson Carr that I saw on the newsstands and I remember reading one on a long bus ride.
November 21st, 2017 at 11:10 pm
The Bencolin titles were great fun, Grand Guignol with the same dark humor.
December 19th, 2020 at 5:05 am
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