CRIMES OF THE TIMES

Southland Times, Issue 23740, 11 February 1939, Page 14

CRIMES OF THE TIMES

THE CROOKED HINGE. By John Dickson Carr. Hamish Hamilton, London, through Whitcombe and Tombs. Price 7/6. ST. PETER’S FINGER. By Gladys Mitchell. Michael Joseph, London, through Whitcombe and Tombs. Price 7/6.

Two of the best detective stories of the last year were published near its end. John Dickson Carr and Gladys Mitchell are both in the top flight of writers in this field of fiction. . Mr Carr is also one of the most prolific, for under the names of John Dickson Carr and Carter Dickson he has written 24 detective novels and one serious historical study. All his detective stories are tinged with the macabre: he draws on what is apparently a vast knowledge of antiquarian law and has the gift of making horror walk at the reader’s shoulder. “The Crooked Hinge” is one of his most original and exciting productions. A stranger claims to be the true Sir John Farnleigh. The result of a decisive test to determine which is the real baronet has not been declared when one of the two claimants is stabbed to death., Murder is suspected, but there is an absence of motive, an absence of means, and—it seems—a complete absence of opportunity. Mr Carr moves on to the activities of a partially wrecked automaton of the middle ages which has come in for a renewed lease of life; and finally, through Dr Fell, a very unobtrusive detective, he unties all the threads of a very grisly plot. Instead of turning suspicion from one character to another, he bamboozles the reader by producing two complete solutions of the murder —of which one, of t course, is false but is the instrument for revealing the other.

Mrs Mitchell has set her new story in a convent. A little girl is found gassed in a bath and the redoubtable Mrs Bradley—rather more subdued than in “Come Away, Death”—is called in to investigate. The plot is worked out inside the convent where Mrs Bradley lives with the sisters and the orphans. The book is brilliantly written and very readable. Mrs Mitchell’s insight and observation are acute and her characters are lifelike. Moreover, in Mrs Bradley she has created an extremely-entertaining personality. If the climax leaves a little dissatisfaction in the mind, it is mainly because Mrs Mitchell has attempted an extremely difficult task in adopting the setting she has, and a plot that depends too heavily on spiritual considerations.