Thu 23 Jun 2022
Diary Review: CARTER DICKSON – The Skeleton in the Clock.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews[2] Comments
CARTER DICKSON – The Skeleton in the Clock. Sir Henry Merrivale #18. Morrow, hardcover, 1948. Dell #481, paperback, 1951. Berkley X1479, paperback, 1967. Belmont, paperback, 1973. Leisure, paperback, 1977. Bantam, paperback, 1982.
Three postcards send Sir Henry Merrivale off to Fleet House to solve a twenty year old mystery. When Martin Drake’s search for a girl met briefly during the war comes to an end, he discovers her already engaged, and his attempts to break up the marriage bring about the murderer’s wrath.
One night is spent in the condemned cell of local prison looking for ghosts, and a mutilated body is found the next morning. In addition, the final capture takes place in a house of mirrors belonging to a traveling fair, so there can be no complaints about adequate background.
However, there is a bit too many interrupted explanations (taken care of later after they are forgotten) and a bit too great a fatalistic attitude by some characters as they refuse to question unlikely business and to press unanswered questions. One obvious mistake (page 146 of the Berkley paperback) does not confuse anything, but the last 28 pages are needed to explain all.
The “locked room†is satisfactorily done, and is actually underplayed this time. As it turns out, the clock containing the skeleton might also be considered the family closet.
Rating: ***
June 23rd, 2022 at 8:12 pm
To some extent I read Carr in either incarnation uncritically. As long as the trip is worth it small mistakes don’t really deter me though I grant they are not unknown.
This is particularly true when Sir Henry or Fell get a bit too comical and too slapstick or when Carr is at less than his full powers as in some later books.
This one is mid-level Carr, and I grant all your points, and would still rather read Carr than most of his contemporaries for sheer entertainment.
I admit some of the late books stretched my ability to do this, but strange as it may seem I don’t just read Carr for the puzzle element and don’t get to upset if it is just a shade off model. I would still rather get to the end of a Carr novel with a smile than to most writers work with a nod of admiration for how neatly they tied all the loose ends together.
There are writers and books where this would bother me, but Carr is in a special class.
June 23rd, 2022 at 8:38 pm
There is, alas, not enough meat to this review for me to know any more of the plot details than what either you or I see here now. (How could have imagined that well over 50 years later, the whole world could read what I was writing solely for myself back then?)
But in the now and present, I go both ways on this one. One, I agree with you that Carr is one of the few authors I can think of where I can almost always sit back and enjoy whenever I read him. But, two, I have one of those minds where if I see the gears in a plot slip, it drives me crazy, even, in theory, with a John Dickson Carr.
The fact is, though, that with a John Dickson Carr novel, it never happens. The gears always mesh. Other matters may affect my pleasure — too much slapstick comedy is one — but never the puzzle.