Customer Reviews

Castle Skull

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I had read this many years ago, and always wanted to read it again. So glad to be able to find it. A very exiting mystery that can be read repeatedly.

The Henri Bencolin stories of John Dickson Carr are marked by suspense and sensation. Castle Skull certainly qualifies, as the other reviewers attest. An investigation of a decade-old murder, the victim a showman who revelled in sensation, the milieu a gruesome castle, are the starting points of Bencolin's investigation.

Carr rated ingenuity as the sine-qua-non of the real detective story and Castle Skull delivers. It is also showcases multiple, fascinating conflicts of personalities, social classes, and wills. On the negative side, it is to some degree a setpiece in an improbable (but well-justified) setting. Carr has some wonderfully evocative moments, yet he does lose the atmosphere at points. And the further you are from the Second World War and the sense of menace evoked by what Churchill titled "The Gathering Storm", the less you will appreciate the touches of atmosphere from that period.

The weaknesses are more visible on the second reading. But the story is vintage John Dickson Carr and vintage Bencolin, right down to their attitudes about Law and Justice.

If you have enjoyed other mysteries by John Dickson Carr, you will probably enjoy Castle Skull. If not, it may still be worth a try.

One of my favorite Carr novels. Bencolin matches wits with Baron von Arnheim, his German counterpart in the spying game from WW1.

Set in and about Castle Skull, the former home of a dead (presumed suicide) magician, this mystery is full of rich characters and great atmosphere.

A burning man is seen staggering across the battlements of Castle Skull before plunging to his death on the banks of the Rhine. The 15th century castle had most recently been the home of the terrifying magician, Maleger who had died seventeen years before this story begins, either as a suicide or a murder victim. His decomposed corpse was found floating down the Rhine, identifiable only through his jewelry and other personal effects. The heirs to Castle Skull are a wealthy Belgian financier, and a vain, ageing actor, both associates of Maleger during the South African diamond rush.

The Versailles Treaty that ended World War I left Germany impoverished and embittered, and smoldering with the short-lived, decadent culture of the Weimar Republic. However, Carr chooses to ignore most of post-WWI German reality. His 1920s Germany is populated with jolly hikers, beer drinkers, and the sinister Prussian, Herr Baron Sigmund von Arnheim--"[he] was...savagely gay, and his almost invisible blond moustache had been waxed until the points stood out like the whiskers of a cat."

Okay, so Herr Baron doesn't click his heels, but he does bow from the hip, has "a cropped skull...eyes of a chill, greenish hue," and dueling scars.

There is also a cast of rich, decadent, and/or eccentric Americans, British, French, and Belgians who inhabit a mansion across the Rhine from Castle Skull, most of whom are suspected, in turn, of torching the actor, Alison after shooting him three times with a Mauser.

Enter the suave, Mephistophelean M. Henri Bencolin, 'juge d'instruction' of the Seine, the head of the Paris police and "the most dangerous man in Europe." He and Baron von Arnheim had played a deadly game of spy-versus-spy during WWI, and now both are invited to solve the case of the flaming 'danse macabre' on the ramparts of Castle Skull.

The cigar-smoking, poker-playing Duchess who owns the mansion across the river from Castle Skull calls her two detectives 'Glass-eye' (did I mention von Arnheim's monocle?) and 'Devil-face,' although M. Bencolin is actually at his most human in this story, in spite of his morbid surroundings.

The setting for the final denouement is a wonderfully grotesque banquet in Castle Skull that will remind you very much of Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death." I won't tell you which detective, Prussian or Parisian, ultimately solves the mystery, but the penultimate chapter of "Castle Skull" is called "The Laughter of Von Arnheim."

The ultimate chapter is called "The Laughter of Bencolin."