Wed 30 Jun 2010
A Review by Curt Evans: CARTER DICKSON – He Wouldn’t Kill Patience.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[12] Comments
CARTER DICKSON – He Wouldn’t Kill Patience. William Morrow & Co., US, hardcover, 1944. Wm.Heinemann, UK, hc, 1944. Reprinted many times in both hardcover and paperback, including: Dell #370, mapback edition, 1954; Berkley X1339, pb, 1966; International Polygonics, 1988.
The only reputedly good Sir Henry Merrivale I had not read before now, Patience had been set aside by me as a little treasure to be opened someday. I decided to read this weekend and I quite enjoyed it.
Other critics and readers, including Doug Greene, have noted the problems with the later HM novels (particularly the last two), with the great HM becoming completely farcical and rather repellently reactionary.
But back to Patience….
This is the one involving a mysterious gassing deaths in a locked and sealed room of a London zoo director and a snake named Patience. It’s soon suspected that murder is involved!
Sir Henry, who appears in the first few pages, is on hand to solve the crime, along with Inspector Masters, who does very little, and a pair of rival magicians, one male and one female, who provide Carr’s much favored bickering love interest.
I found the obligatory bickering lovers easier to take here because they are theatrical people to start with (and the man actually is not that bad). No other memorable characters outside a splendidly misanthropic zoo caretaker, but they are sufficient and not irritating (except for a middle-aged woman who at least is meant to be irritating).
There is some fine slapstick humor at Merrivale’s expense in the beginning of the tale, and he is in good form throughout it. The zoo setting is nicely none, amusing and sinister by turns, and it is merged with the the current London Blitz very effectively.
Near the end something happens which may seem absurd, but it is all beautifully explained a few pages later.
Ironically, the weakest part of this book may be the sealed room problem, the explanation of which may disappoint some by being not quite so miraculous. But it is fairly clued, as is the identity of the murderer. This may not be considered one of the great Carr’s, but, all in all, I found it one of his more entertaining tales.
Editorial Comment: Curt has recently been re-reading a number of books by John Dickson Carr, aka Carter Dickson. This is the fifth in a series of reviews he wrote as a result. The Problem of the Green Capsule was the fourth, and you can read it here.
WARNING: PLOT ALERT! In Comment #8, some aspects of the solution are discussed.
June 30th, 2010 at 8:25 pm
I’ll second the recommendation for this one, a superior entry in the HM series and one of the relatively few contemporary mysteries to utilize the Blitz effectively while the war was still going on.
In many mysteries of the period if the war is mentioned at all it is because the hero is in intelligence or hunting spies, but other than a few blackouts the actual Blitz itself doesn’t feature much. I guess the reading public wanted to escape the war rather than read about it — or that was the reasoning of the editors.
And leave it to Carr to work in a cobra, a rattlesnake, and a black mamba into the stew.
July 1st, 2010 at 12:30 pm
I read this last year, and I’ll third it. If you don’t like snakes, this may give you some problems, but it is a superior bit of wartime mystery. The ending can’t really be explained here, but I have heard one of the central ideas denounced rather . Actually, having had some recent experience with WWII planes, I’m not sure that the criticisms are entirely fair (sorry if this doesn’t make sense, but there’s no ‘conceal’ button.)
July 1st, 2010 at 4:42 pm
If you like snakes in your mysteries, or rather if you don’t, you should stay a long way from ISLE OF THE SNAKES, by Robert L. Fish (1963).
But as David and Bradstreet have pointed out, this is a good one, too.
— Steve
July 1st, 2010 at 4:50 pm
Bradstreet
If you’d like to say more about the ending, I think this comments section might be the place to do it.
Send a comment first saying WARNING, PLOT ALERT.
Then post an immediate followup comment saying whatever you want to about the ending.
There seems to be no better way to do it than this, but since the endings of detective stories are often — if not almost always — the key to how enjoyable they are, they really ought to be brought up and discussed.
Don’t you all agree?
— Steve
July 1st, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I hate snakes but love this and the Fish novel. Not that I don’t squirm a bit when I read them. Another good one is Lawrence Blochman’s BOMBAY EXPRESS which has three men trapped in a passenger car with two ten foot king cobras, and William Harrison’s SAVANNAH BLUE, a thriller with a killer using venom from his African snake farms cobras and mambas to kill.
July 1st, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Steve
The comments section is the perfect place — with a warning — to discuss the specifics of plot. I’d love to hear Bradstreet’s point.
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:38 am
Yes, the Blitz material was quite nicely handled. I even got to enjoy the feud between the guy and “girl” from the feuding magician families–except when she had to go and “baby talk” to him! He would have been justified in tossing her in the snake pit at that point, in my opinion. And the H. M. pratfall “bit” at the beginning is hilarious, I think.
I thought initially the way HM was treating to murderer at the end was horrifying, but I missed the clue that explained it all. It was quite clever really.
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:31 pm
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
At the end of the book it is revealed that what everyone assumed was the sound of a aeroplane was in fact the noise of a vacuum cleaner. I must admit that I blinked a few times when I originally read it, but I am more convinced by it now. It was recently the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, and it was celebrated with flights of the original spitfires, etc. I was sitting at home with the wife over the weekend in question. At one point, my wife went to do something by herself. I heard a low rumble, and thought that she was hoovering the upstairs bedroom. Soon after I was walking through the room where we keep the Dyson, and realised that it was still there. I then spotted the wife standing out in the garden, looking into the sky. I joined her, and we both looked for the source of the noise. Lo and behold, a Spitfire hurtled overhead. Because I was more used to the noise of my cleaner, I had assumed that a very similar noise was the same thing. I suppose that someone in a Blitzed London might well make the same assumption in reverse.
July 3rd, 2010 at 12:55 am
Bradstreet
Good observation. I lived in West Texas near the home of the Confederate Air Force, and have noticed the same thing on occasion. It’s always nice to find one of the masters observations is accurate — even common.
July 20th, 2010 at 7:10 pm
[…] He Wouldn’t Kill Patience, also as by Carter Dickson, was the fifth, and you can read it here. […]
September 29th, 2019 at 7:48 am
[…] room and challenged Carr to find a solution of his own – which he did, and the result was He Wouldn’t Kill Patience which for my money is one of its author’s most clever and thoroughly satisfying books. Rawson […]
April 21st, 2020 at 2:59 pm
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