FANTASTIC TRAGEDY

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 208, 30 May 1936, Page 25

FANTASTIC TRAGEDY

“The Arabian Nights’ Murder,” by John Dickson Carr. (London: Hamish Hamilton. 7/-).

In his time Mr. Carr has written quite a number of excellent stories of mystery and detection, but none that is comparable with his latest, “The Arabian Nights’ Murder.” This is a most queerly fantastic tale, crowded with events whose extreme oddity is equalled only by the logic with which they are ultimately ■ explained. The affair begins as a harmless joke, played at night in an oriental museum in London. Through a crazy sequence of happenings it develops into tragedy, and the solution which is reached at each stage of the detection merely serves to make nonsense of what has gone before. As the bewildered AssistantCommissioner of the Metropolitan Police puts it: “This damned case is a kind of chrysalis, which opens layer by layer, with a successive explanation on each layer, and under it the word ‘Stung.’ ” In the end, it is Dr. Gideon Fell who provides a fitting elucidation, and he does it with smoothness and precision, fitting each piece or this elusive jig-saw neatly into its rightful place.