John Dickson Carr
Le Tre Bare

An American writing deductive mysteries.

Trustworthy?

Who knows.

That damn dandy S. S. Van Dine has left quite a bad taste in my mouth and has instilled a distrust towards American genre authors that I can't shake off. Okay, it was up to an American to invent this type of novel since no one else had bothered, but once the toy was pulled out of the hat, the British, in my opinion, played with it better. The Americans, at the time when "The Three Coffins" was written, were big on hard-boiled, and thank God for that.

I stumbled upon it while searching for new classic or deductive mystery authors, whatever you prefer, outside the usual circle of well-known names. Not that I'm crazy about it, just an occasional craving that grabs me from time to time.

During my random web browsing, it was as if there was a big neon arrow pointing me to it amid the myriad of available titles; from various sources, it was sold to me as the mystery containing the best-conceived locked-room enigma. Until that moment, I believed that the mystery (the one with the best enigma, etc.) was "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" by Agatha Christie.

So I took the opportunity to see if I could debunk that belief of mine.

No such luck, some other book will have to change my mind. The enigma is certainly well-constructed, but in my humble opinion, the execution of the tricks is too contrived and, in some cases, also too unbelievable. There's little to compete with the elegance of Christie's inventions. And then the author is a bit unfair: I'm sure not all the clues are provided before the final explanation by the detective in question. Nevertheless, you can still identify the culprit before the conclusion, but not too quickly, fortunately (at least, this is what happened to me).

The style. For now, it's the only book I've read by John Dickson Carr, and so it's only on this reading that I base my opinions. Commercial writing, smooth as silk, in line, I would say, with that of Agatha Christie; don't expect Raymond Chandler.

I can't remember who said it, but someone argued that it's impossible to find both a great enigma and excellent character development in the same detective story. I’d say this book proves them right. Dr. Gideon Fell, the novel's mystery solver, is a sort of barrel following the police officer managing the case. He has the bulk, agility, and psychological depth of a barrel. In addition to the barrel, he has a mustache (at least, that's how I remember it, I haven't bothered to verify) and some brief flashes of striking loquacity (don't miss the spiel on the history of mystery he elaborates; interesting, to be fair, but still...). He doesn't fascinate like Phil Marlowe or Sam Spade, but he also doesn't manage to be quite as annoying as the aforementioned Philo Vance or Hercule Poirot. Instead, he is a bit irritating, and what makes him so is a Sherlock Holmes-like reluctance to provide information about his insights, which in this character is exaggerated somewhat clumsily and makes it too obvious that it is a gimmick (perhaps the only one) to keep the reader's attention.