Disney, Dorothy Cameron - Explosion (1948) 

The best parts of Disney's Explosion (1948) deal with the crime itself (Chapters 4), a second section depicting it in further detail (Chapters 8 and 9), and its reconstruction at the end of the book (Chapter 29). These sections form three different views of the crime. Each view is progressively more interior, revealing a hidden inner working not seen in the previous version. Each focuses more and more closely on the actual action in the basement: the first shows the house as a whole, the second a general account of the basement, finally the third shows the events in sharp detail. These three views are nested within each other, like a series of Russian dolls. Such progressive views recall the work of John Dickson Carr, such as his far more complicated The Arabian Nights Murders (1936). They also recalls the many different perspectives on the crime continually set forth in Mary Roberts Rinehart's Miss Pinkerton (1932).

The three views continuously get lower in terms of height. The first is on the first floor level of the next door neighbor; the second focuses on the basement, much of the third actually takes place on the floor of the basement itself. This gives a sense of geometric progression as well to the series. The three views are progressively more life oriented, as well. The first is the mechanical, annihilating explosion. The next deals with people in the abstract, and normal rooms. The third actually shows us the people and their actions in detail. There has been a progression from the physical to the human. Also, the characters seem more and more alive. The first deals with total annihilation; the second with death; the third shows us people actually living under these circumstances. It is like running a film backward: we progress from the finale to more and more life.

The crime imagery of Explosion is related to World War II. Again and again, Disney compares it to the bombed out buildings of the war. Much of the plot also depends on the just finished war as a background.

Disney's novels show the surrealism sometimes found in modern detective fiction. In Strawstack, The Golden Swan Murder and Explosion, the crimes always take place right in a character's bedroom. It is this room treated as a character's basic living space, that is the author's point of view. This place often becomes extremely surreal, and transformed.

Mike Grost