Deadly Hall was one of John Dickson Carr’s historical novels, published towards the very end of his career. I would say that it seems to have a fairly poor reputation but that would imply that it is a topic of conversation. In fact remarkably few blogs I read have reviewed it and when it is mentioned it is usually in passing or as part of a list.

My expectations therefore were fairly low but there were a few parts of the scenario that gave me hope of a good read. Firstly, the New Orleans setting can be a rich source of gothic tension and dread which we all know Carr can do so well. And secondly the mention of a treasure hunt seemed quite promising and offered a different sort of mystery than my previous experiences of the author have provided.

The novel is set in 1927 which, though historical at the time of writing, was well within the author’s own lifetime. Jeff Caldwell, an author who has emigrated to France, receives a letter from a childhood friend asking him to visit the home that friend has inherited in Louisiana. He does so and we learn about a treasure of some gold that is supposedly hidden on the property that no one has been able to find. We also hear that some years earlier a man died in the middle of the night apparently falling to his death while walking up the staircase with a metal tray.

Another death will take place but since it happens exactly at the halfway point in the novel I do not intend to provide any details of that event except that it takes place in a locked room. This is rather a late point for a first death to occur in a novel and I do think it reflects that the novel suffers from some awkward pacing and structural issues. More on that in a moment.

There are two problems that the reader is tasked with solving. Firstly, is there a treasure, what is it and where is it hidden? Second, who or what is responsible for the deaths?

The first question was, for me, the more entertaining of the two though because I had been treating that element of the novel as being something of an afterthought or a bit of narrative color it came as a surprise to me. It is in this aspect of the story that I feel the author pulls off a rather wonderful trick that is simple but imaginative and had this been a short story focused on that part of the plot I would be full of praise.

Unfortunately the second question suffers because of the pacing of the novel. While Carr primes the pump by giving us some background on the historical death, the characters are existing in a rather aimless state. Even with the promise of a treasure hunt, they mill around talking about the fate of the house but there is little movement or action. Until the death happens, this strand of the narrative offers little to excite the reader.

Things improve once the body shows up but even then the investigation feels a little dry and long-winded. Accusations are made and we get some further background on the family but the crime lacks the genius or appeal to the imagination of Carr at his best. This is a shame because when the time comes to explaining how the thing was managed, Carr presents us with a pretty clever solution. Had the setup and execution of the investigation been a little tighter it is easy to see how this story might have had more impact.

Beyond the problems with the scenario itself, I feel the quality of the characterizations is also disappointing at times. While Jeff and Penny shared some amusing interactions and back story, the other characters often seemed a little flat. Being set in the South, the book also features some inelegant and misguided attempts to write African-American dialect for the servant characters that will grate on some readers.

The book works a little better as a historical, though it is far more self-conscious about making its references to events and aspects of the time than my previous experience of a Carr historical novel. There is a tendency for characters to predict historical developments that would take place within a few years and while those comments certainly help to place the action within a timeframe, they also have the unfortunate effect of making everyone seem very prescient. On a more positive note, I thought that the journey down the Mississippi by paddle steamer was very evocative and did a fabulous job of setting the mood, as did the references to prohibition.

Deadly Hall is not a great Carr by any means but I don’t want to suggest that it is without merit. There are some good ideas here which is remarkable given the author had been active for about forty years by this point and I think with a little reorganization and change of emphasis the story could have been tightened and improved.

While it may be a little lacking as a murder mystery, I do think the way Carr resolves the mystery of the hidden treasure very cleverly and for that trick alone I give him props. It shouldn’t be anyone’s first Carr read. I wouldn’t even suggest getting to it as early as I have done in your exploration of his work but it shouldn’t be discounted too quickly either. Even a lesser Carr work is still quite readable!

After having two very positive early experiences with John Dickson Carr’s work, I was keen to get back to him quickly. I decided however that I wanted to mix things up a little by selected one of his novels that didn’t feature Dr. Gideon Fell to get a better sense of his range as a writer.

Unfortunately as many of you will be aware, the selection of Carr titles available is patchy at best and of the few ebooks available this was the one that seemed most promising. The Witch of the Low Tide is a standalone historical mystery, which is a style I tend to enjoy, and features not just one but two impossible crimes.

The first is an attempted strangling that takes place in the home of a friend of our sleuth. When the would-be strangler is interrupted they run down into the cellar which they lock from the inside. In spite of there being no exit however when the cellar is searched the strangler is found to have mysteriously vanished.

The second crime is also a strangling and takes place in a pavilion located on a stretch of wet sand. Our hero discovers the body there but is struck by how there have been no footprints left in the sand. The Police quickly jump to the conclusion that his lady friend, Betty, is responsible so he decides that he will play detective and find the killer himself.

This setup of a male taking responsibility for proving the innocence of a female character seems to be a common theme in Carr’s work from the little of it I have enjoyed so far. The Problem of the Wire Cage featured its male hero trying to cover up for his love interest and having to solve the crime himself while The Problem of the Green Capsule had a detective character fall in love with a female suspect.

While each of those stories featured a younger male fulfilling that role, the romantic lead here is an older analyst who has formed an attachment to a much younger widow. What makes that situation more intriguing is that near the start of the book that character is told by Inspector Twigg that the object of his affections may have a scandalous secret, setting up an antagonistic relationship between the two men that runs throughout the novel.

That antagonism was, for me, one of the most successful parts of this novel and I think it is a very effective source of tension in its second half and makes both characters more interesting. Certainly I think Garth, the analyst hero, becomes more interesting once he has an adversary to pit his wits against and we see his resourcefulness come through.

The mysteries themselves however feel a little unfocused and I felt some of the explanation given at the end did not make sense to me. Looking at the spoiler section of the review at The Green Capsule, I see that I am not alone in feeling that it did not make a lot of sense that the two crimes would play out the way they do.

While I think that explanation left something to be desired, I did generally enjoy the journey to get to that point. I particularly appreciated Carr’s attention to little period details that gave a strong sense of its historical setting. Some of those details are introduced in quite splashy ways but others feature more subtly such as the general lack of knowledge about psychoanalysis and the work of Freud. It is these sorts of touches that I think make this a genuine historical mystery rather than just a mystery that happens to be set in the past.

Though I enjoyed the interactions between Garth and Twigg, I did find one aspect of them to be very frustrating. This novel significantly spoils The Mystery of the Yellow Room, revealing the killer’s identity and how the victim was killed. While I understand Carr’s interest in having that book provide inspiration for a theory of how these crimes happened, it is annoying to have an ending spoiled. Guess I won’t be reading that next week like I planned then…

So, where does that leave me overall? I think The Witch of the Low Tide has some interesting ideas and I did enjoy the setting but I felt that the different elements didn’t come together quite as tidily as I wished, particularly in that conclusion. Still, I did enjoy the journey and would certainly be interested to try some of the other stories that Carr did without his series detectives. I may just pop back to Dr. Fell for another impossible crime or two first though…