Any club year is a good excuse to read a good, old-fashioned murder mystery. In Keswick a few years ago, I bought a handful of a shop’s wide selection of novels by Carter Dickson and John Dickson Carr – who are, of course, the same person. I’m not sure what distinction there might be between the type of novel he wrote under each name, or what makes this book a ‘fast, tough mystery’ in the words of the cover blurb. ‘Tough’ as in hard-to-solve, or hard-boiled, or some third option? No matter, let’s enjoy this ludicrous cover image and get into it!
Dickson is renowed for variations on the locked room mystery, and this is a curious spin on it. Frederick Manning is a very wealthy American businessman who doesn’t seem particularly fond of any of his three adult children. The novel opens with a meeting between he and they, and his daughter’s all-American boyfriend, in his offices – where he laments the memory fo their long-dead mother, admits to have a mistress, and sets various cats among pigeons. “I was wondering,” he says, for instance, to his daughter’s partner, “why you and I dislike each other so much.” Any practised reader of detective novels will know that, in this misanthropic, selfish gentleman, we have found our probable victim.
Not long later, the family are all gathered at Manning’s palatial home – including Sir Henry Merrivale, also known as ‘H.M.’ He is apparently a series detective figure – loud, eccentric, violently intelligent, and the sort of character who is quite delightful to read about and a nightmare to know. In his initial appearance in this book, for example, he antagonises and exasperates a cop (whom we will meet again later) by apparently being able to get through the metro gates with a magic word. With his wealth and idiosyncracies, he could have been crafted by P.G. Wodehouse – and there is a lot of humour of the ‘fish out of water’ variety, with this very English man thrown into an American context. But there is also an undercurrent of steely determination to solve murders and misdoing.
The reason the family have come together is because Frederick Manning is going to reveal a secret – and H.M. has been told that he will witness a miracle. And he does. Seemingly to evade the sound of police sirens, Manning dives fully-clothed into the swimming pool. He doesn’t emerge, and his body isn’t found. Where has he gone?
It is an exciting premise for a novel, and Dickson/Carr had to find dozens of variants of the ‘locked room’ mystery – for this isn’t quite a locked room, of course, but the idea is the same.
From here, things naturally spiral. H.M. somehow manages to interview and follow all the major characters, and brings energy to the novel that sustains us. And, yes, we do end up at one point in an overgrown graveyard that is on rented land – though I suspect Dickson came up with the excellent title and retro-fitted the scene in question.
Obviously I shan’t spoil anything, but I will say that the solution to the swimming pool mystery was a bit of a let-down – and the murderer was the person I picked in the opening scenes, though that was more by good luck than any deduction. As plots go, it was a bit flimsy – but, for a reading experience, it was enormous fun. Totally silly, totally engaging, and I’d certainly be happy to read more of H.M.’s eccentric sleuthing.
