Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN num: 9780821717035
ISBN number: 0821717030
Label: Zebra
Manufacturer: Zebra
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 269
Printing Date: May 01, 1986
Publishing house: Zebra
Sale Popularity Level: 789041
Studio: Zebra
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Rated by buyers 
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This is another load of malarkey from John Dickson Carr, but it's entertaining and moves right along, with a relative minimum of Carr's trademark "time-killing while answers are posed by one character and conveniently not answered or misdirected by another" device. It's usually the recurring character of the blusteringly infallible, corpulent and wheezing Gideon Fell who resorts most often and most readily to this practice of ducking questions or misdirecting the replies, but since there's somewhat less of Fell overall in this book than in the average Fell story, the plot momentum keeps up a better than usual pace by JDC standards.
Carr's mystery novels vary widely and wildly in terms of effectiveness, but at his best he can create some lively characters and keep us guessing. This one is told in the first-person by one of Carr's most likable narrators, who is engaged to a requisite spunky young modern woman. The two of them and various other "types" are invited to spend the weekend at a newly bought-and-renovated large house with a reputation for being haunted. It's not exactly an "old dark house" narrative, because the various personages spend plenty of time out in the sunny back garden as well. But Carr is basically taking the popular form from the 20s and 30s and throwing in some variations of his own.
The solution to this one almost didn't matter to me by the time it rumbled out of Dr. Fell, but it was rather good fun all along the way. Carr has a handful of genre classics, and in between them he wrote a lot of superficially entertaining twaddle (and at least a few total duds). This one falls squarely in the middle category: it's enjoyable to read, he assembles a fairly interesting cast of characters and keeps a few mysterious subplots spinning like plates for most of the book. You could do worse, from the Carr canon, and if you don't set your expectations too high, this one should satisfy whatever urge might lead you to reach for a JDC book off the shelf for some stormy weekend.
Rated by buyers 
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"The Man Who Could Not Shudder" (1940) is a fun read and one of the author's less complicated mysteries--actually one of his few mysteries where the identity of the murderer is obvious before the grand denouement at the end of the story. This book is more of a howdunit than a whodunit. Carr's serial detective, the humungous Dr. Gideon Fell galumphs into view about half way through, after the obnoxious Mr. Logan is already violently deceased. Logan meets his end when a revolver jumps off of a wall display and plugs him. Naturally no one was anywhere near the revolver when it went off.
The plot is one of the more standard for gothics and Golden Age mysteries. A rich man renovates an old mansion, supposedly haunted, then invites his acquaintances over for a week-end of ghost hunting. One of the guests feels something grab her ankle as she walks in the door, and so we're off to a jolly start to the house party. Guests are awakened by a loud thump in the middle of the night and set off in the dark, dressed in jammies and bathrobes to investigate the mysterious noise. Their various nocturnal meetings and accusations complicate at least three love affairs.
One of the most puzzling historical events to occur in the old house was the demise of an old butler, who appeared to have been swinging on a monstrous iron chandelier before it pulled loose from the ceiling and crushed him. When the chandelier incident is repeated with one of the current house guests, Dr. Fell must act quickly to protect the innocent and punish the real murderer.
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