The Burning Court

This book has all the Carr elements - a great setting, a taste of the supernatural, and an excellent locked room mystery that is also accompanied by a locked tomb mystery. This is a truly chilling ghost story that fires on all cylinders right up to the very end. We have an old man that appeared to die of natural causes, but clues point to poisoning, and when they go into the sealed and locked tomb to get his body in order to do tests, well, the body isn't there! That is all I'm going to say about the plot because half the fun is the getting there in this book. Carr who is often considered as one of the most "British" detective story writers was actually born in Pennsylvania. He writes with a subtelty and ingenuity that is still show more enjoyable today, even though his books were written mostly in the 30's and 40's. He did write up until his death in 1977 though, and his body of work is long and critically acclaimed. show less

I'd first heard of John Dickson Carr through the many excellent scripts he did for the old time radio show Suspense. I picked up The Burning Court because it is held as one of his classic novels and it is not part of a series.

At first, I was very put off by the writing. The book was written in that very old fashioned, arch-British 'Dash it all' style. That always seems phony to me, but especially for a novel that is set in Pennsylvania in 1929 (though the novel was written in 1937). F. Scott Fitzgerald had written The Great Gatsby in 1925 and those characters are so much less stiff than The Burning Court's stuffed shirts. I don't expect John Dickson Carr to write like F. Scott Fitzgerald, I just want to point out that the characters in show more this novel don't act the way they do because of historical accuracy.

Despite its flaws, they become less noticeable once the mystery starts. Even giving a brief synopsis of this one is difficult, not because of giving possible spoilers, but because the tale is such a twisted knot. A man is convinced that his recently deceased uncle was poisoned. A trip to the (hermetically sealed) tomb shows that the coffin is empty! From there we read an interesting and complex tale involving witchcraft, family secrets and possible reincarnation or possession.

Mr Carr did an excellent job of setting up an impossible situation and then piling on ever more convoluted details. I got a giddy feeling as Mr. Carr stacked each new twist on to the mystery, thinking 'There's no way he's going to have a solution for this one!' The solution is satisfactory, though it seems wildly improbable that the characters in the novel would have been able to figure it out without more investigation. The tale is told mainly through scenes of groups of characters sitting in a room and hashing it out, endlessly. These have got to be the most talkative people in Pennsylvania. Really all of the characters and their actions were unbelievable. I don't think anybody acts the way these people do outside of a mystery novel.

I was surprised by frank mentions of abortion and sexual excitement. I can only imagine how scandalous they must have been when the book was first published. There are also a few moments of humor in the book that worked surprisingly well given the general dark mood of the story being told.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and can see why it is a classic in the mystery field. As for myself, it looks like I will continue to prefer my mysteries to be more hard boiled. show less

The epilogue to this locked room mystery ruined it for me. I can't go into why without spoilers...

I really liked how Gaudin Cross figured out a non-supernatural solution to this mystery and if the book had ended there, I would have given it 4*. I could enjoy the spooky atmosphere and Stevens' doubts & fears about his wife Marie even more once a logical explanation had been produced. However, I am not a big fan of books featuring the paranormal or supernatural so when the epilogue returned me to that realm, I was very disappointed.

Capably done but too grim for my taste --a serious horror novel with an unpleasant ending, quite unlike his humorous mysteries. It involves a woman who may be a reincarnation of a 17th century witch involved in the Affaire of the Poisons at the court of Louis XIV

I like this one because it is set in the Philadelphia suburbs. The puzzle is not really one of Carr's best, however, and the disappointing double-surprise-twist a reminder that less is often more.

The Master of the Locked Room Mystery is in top form with this story of not just one,but two superb puzzles. Miles Despard is found dead in bed of ,it is thought natural causes. But when a silver chalice in which the dregs of arsenic have been found, it is then obvious that the old man has been poisoned .
All the entrances to his bedroom are locked,but when a servant peers through a small chink in a curtained window,she sees a mysterious woman in old-fashioned clothes handing Miles the poisoned chalice and then disappearing through a door that has been bricked-up for many years.
The second,and even more mysterious event is that the old man's body is then buried in a rather curious crypt. It is an underground building with solid show more stone-block walls,the steps down to it have been covered with a heavy stone slab,then covered with earth and finally covered again with paving-slabs which have been cemented down. When several concerned people take all this up with great difficulty,the body has disappeared.
As often happens with this author,there is much talk of ghosts and witches,and indeed witch burning - hence the title 'The Burning Court' show less

Great book. Enjoyed it very much with the twist at the end.