A John Dickson Carr Trio, Including: The Three Coffins; The Crooked Hinge; and The Case of the Constant Suicides [Hardcover]

John Dickson Carr (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 472 pages
• Publisher: Harper and Brothers (January 1, 1957)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0006AULJ4
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #820,292 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three Gideon Fell mysteries, November 12, 2004

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A John Dickson Carr Trio, Including: The Three Coffins; The Crooked Hinge; and The Case of the Constant Suicides (Hardcover)

All three of these mysteries star John Dickson Carr's gargantuan, shovel-hatted detective, Dr. Gideon Fell and take place in Great Britain between the world wars.

This author is known as the Master of the Locked Room Mystery, and he does not disappoint his aficionados in "The Three Coffins." In fact Carr's serial detective, Gideon Fell takes a chapter off from the plot to present his famous 'locked room' lecture to a handful of long-suffering friends.

I can just picture myself with his friends after a nice lunch in the pub, throwing myself about and moaning, "Not THAT lecture again. Let's get on with the plot." All I got out of the lecture were the many ways ice and frozen blood could be used to kill someone who is supposedly alone in a sealed room.

Plus if you ask me, the murders in this book were cheats done with smoke (actually snow) and mirrors, and a clock that only the lumbering Dr. Fell had the brains to notice was incorrectly set. However, I don't read this author for his intricate murder set-ups. I read his books for their wonderfully ominous atmosphere. Here Carr does not disappoint. In "The Three Coffins," three brothers, jailed in Transylvania for bank robbery fake their deaths during an outbreak of the plague and are buried alive. The one with the shovel in his coffin digs his way to freedom, then leaves his brothers in their graves and runs off alone with the hidden bank loot.

Let's just say that the two brothers who are left behind play important roles in the murder and counter-murder many years later in London. I don't want to give away the plot, gimmicky though it is. Read "The Three Coffins" for a few good shudders.

In "The Crooked Hinge" all of the characters act suspiciously, including the true and false heir to the extensive Farnleigh estate (and the title that goes with it), their two lawyers, the butler, Lady Farnleigh, and assorted family friends. The reader has many reasons to suspect each character in turn after the murder (or was it suicide?) of one of the two competing heirs. The only person who might be able to tell whether the true John Farnleigh died or still lives is his tutor, Murray who happens to have taken a thumb-o-graph of young John before he was sent away to America to live with a distant relative.

John wasn't the heir, but the black sheep of the family when he was packed off to Colorado via the spanking, new ocean liner, 'Titanic.' He was thought to have died when his ship sank on her maiden voyage, but after his older brother dies without issue, not one but two John Farnleighs show up within a year of each other to claim the family estate and title. The first one to appear marries John's childhood sweetheart and settles down to manage Farnleigh.

Then up pops John Farnleigh #2, one of the competing heirs dies, and someone steals Murray's thumb-o-graph. The reader is beset with conflicting stories and clues, when Dr. Fell finally lumbers onto the scene with his shovel-hat, swirling cape, and crutch-headed cane. He figures out who killed whom right away, but the reader is left grasping at hints (some of them pretty darn subtle - I think Carr cheats a little on this mystery) until the final denouement, which involves that fateful night when the 'Titanic' went down.

"The Case of the Constant Suicides" (1941) is a fun read and one of the author's more interesting mysteries--three men die and the reader must determine who committed suicide and who was murdered. This book is very much of a howdunit as well as a whodunit. The humungous Dr. Gideon Fell, galumphs into view about a third of the way through, after one man is already mysteriously deceased. Old Angus Campbell meets his end after plunging out of the window of his locked tower bedroom. The door has to be broken down in order for the deceased man's bedroom to be examined. The only unusual object in the tower room is an empty animal carrier, its wire-mesh door tightly shut.

John Dickson Carr takes a turn to heavy-handed humor in "The Case of the Constant Suicides." Most of the roistering is caused by a malt whiskey called 'the Doom of the Campbells.' A pesky American newspaperman is drenched, shot at, and hunted from the castle grounds whenever the Doom is flowing through the inhabitants of the castle. This isn't my favorite Gideon Fell mystery, but it was fun to read--more smiles than frissons of terror.