Books : A John Dickson Carr Trio, Including: The Three Coffins; The Crooked Hinge; and The Case of the Constant Suicides
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Label: Harper and Brothers
Manufacturer: Harper and Brothers
Page Count: 472
Printing Date: January 01, 1957
Publishing house: Harper and Brothers
Sale Popularity Level: 1340589
Studio: Harper and Brothers
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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John Dickson Carr excelled at creating "impossible" crimes and then explaining how they occurred. To enjoy Carr's mysteries, you must like puzzles that have intricate solutions, and not mind that a few aspects may be difficult to follow. While Carr's solutions are clever, these mysteries were written in the 1930s to 1950s, so there may be clues that don't hold up in today's CSI era. Carr also liked to include a corny, but enjoyable, romance in many of his mysteries. Though some will disagree, Carr's most entertaining mysteries are those that feature Sir Henry Merrivale.
This Trio includes three Gideon Fell mysteries. Some consider THE THREE COFFINS Carr's masterpiece, but to me it reads like a school textbook: cardboard characters making long statements, diagrams, lists of facts. The solution is surprising, but involves a lot of technical details that would have to work just right. THE CROOKED HINGE has interesting supporting characters, but the solution depends on a crucial fact that is virtually unguessable and (in my opinion) unfair. THE CONSTANT SUICIDES has interesting supporting characters and some twists and turns along the way, but the solution is complicated and difficult to guess, and romantics will be disappointed by the last page.
The very first three Gideon Fell mysteries--"Hag's Nook," "The Mad Hatter Mystery," and "The Eight of Swords"--are much better. So are Carr's Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries (written under the name Carter Dickson).
Rated by buyers 
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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 grey 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 very 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 humour 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.
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