The Red Widow Murders

The Red Widow Murders is book three in the series featuring Sir Henry Merrivale (HM to his friends). And this one is a doosie. It seems that a group of people have gathered at the home of Lord Mantling, where nine of them draw cards to see who will spend a few hours alone in the so-called Red Widow's room, the scene of unexplained deaths going back to 1803. The cards are revealed, and it is one Mr. Bender who goes off to spend some time alone. Every fifteen minutes someone asks if he's okay, and he always answers. When time's up the other 8 people open the door, and there lies Bender, dead. But there was no way in or out of that room, and he'd been answering their queries the entire time. So how could this happen? Sir Henry Merrivale to the rescue, to uncover the truth. Fun fun fun! There's something to be said about the pleasure of reading these old, vintage mystery novels, with their often elaborately-plotted crimes and solutions that even if you tried, you couldn't guess. Especially in this one, where there are a number of suspects, plenty of clues, and an equal number of red herrings left for the reader to sift through. The Red Widow Murders also offers its readers a great backstory which in and of itself is a bit chilling. The story moves at a very nice pace. The characters are well drawn, the atmosphere is perfect, the story is a good one, and the mystery will leave you hanging until the very end. This one I can definitely recommend, especially to fans of golden-age mystery novels and of John Dickson Carr in particular. It's not a cozy novel by any stretch, and modern readers of mystery may find it a bit slow considering the fast pace of novels nowadays. However, if you are a dyed-in-the-wool fan of vintage crime, like me, it really is worth every minute you put into it.

...though I doubt you can: I certainly never have. John Dickson Carr/Carter Dickson's legendary detective Sir Henry Merrivale is one of the titans from the Golden Age of the mystery novel, and for my money is the most impressive, amusing, and intimidating of any of them. In this novel, a young man agrees to spend the night in a haunted room, and when the room is unlocked after two hours he is dead of no apparent cause, and had been for more than an hour--though he had seemingly answered calls from his friends waiting outside the room during that time. The mystery baffles everyone, including especially the readers--no detective fiction writer ever produced mysteries that, while being fair in the presentation of clues, were harder to figure out--but H.M. as always is equal to the challenge. But there is a real sense of sadness as well as fun about H.M., whose loud antics thinly veil his regret over the deaths and disappointment his cases invariably bring to light, and his keen, watchful intelligence--he is like a poker player (and H.M. is mentioned off-handedly as being a fine one) whose bluster and jokes are intended to distract his opponents and observers from figuring out what he is really thinking and planning. One can readily see how H.M. could have been a formidable intelligence officer (where deception is so critical) as well as a masterful detective. But what really sets him apart from the Holmeses and Queens and Wolfes is perhaps that he seems immensely more sheer fun to spend time with. At one point in The Red Widow Murders (Chapter 11) H.M. insists that his "Watson" spend a late night with him at home, drinking whiskey and coffee, conversing interestingly and intelligently but rarely to the point, and playing board games ("what looked like children's pursuits") until the sun comes up. There likely has never been another fictional detective as amusing. Also buried beneath the main plotline of this eerie, intricate mystery is a most interesting and chilling romance subplot, which concludes with what I can only describe as a stunning critique of modern romance...highly recommended.