John Dickson Carr

Reading the books of John Dickson Carr has become a passion of mine in recent years. So far I have read 21 of his books. Not a bad start, though considering he wrote about 70 books I’ve still got a way to go. He’s probably an author you’ve never heard. A writer from the Golden Age of Detective fiction (Agatha Christie’s era), he is known for his impossible crime stories and locked-room murder mysteries. I first became aware of him whilst reading a list of essential crime fiction published in the Guardian newspaper a few years ago. They recommended his book “The Hollow Man”. Thankfully this was of his books still in print. I read it and loved every bit of it. It was fantastic story telling and a masterful plot. Since that point I’ve been hooked on Carr books.

Half the fun of reading his books is collecting them in the first place. There are less than half a dozen of his books still in print. It will be a real challenge to gather together all his books and read them. And hopefully an enjoyable challenge. In my first year of reading Carr I went to the famous book town Hay-on-Wye to hunt down some books. I found one Carr and left with a fresh appreciation of how difficult it could be to build my collection. Websites like ebay and amazon market place have plenty of Carr books available but I know as my collection grows it will become increasing difficult to find those rarer books. And to make it even more fun there are the different versions of his books to collect, namely the English and American editions. As a sign of my passion for Carr I was in France in summer last year and bought three second hand copies of his books in French. Needless to say I can’t read French, but it’s pretty cool to have them in my Carr collection.

So 2011. A simple aim. To read 9 more Carr books to take the total upto 30. I already have five unread books to get on with. Actually six come to think of it. Though the sixth is a non-fiction work, a biography on the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I now present a list of my Top 10 John Dickson Carr books. It will be interesting to see if there is much change to this list by the end of this year.

1. The Hollow Man
2. The Judas Window
3. Papa La-Bas
4. The Emperor’s Snuff Box
5. It Walks by Night
6. The Seat of the Scornful
7. The Crooked Hinge
8. Fire, Burn
9. Captain Cuthroat
10. He Who Whispers