Carr, John Dickson - Scandal at High Chimneys (1959)

Review by Nick Fuller 2/5 This "Victorian melodrama", with its hero locked in the room with the victim, and the changeling children, is strongly reminiscent of Carr's earlier The Judas Window, and of Christie's Mrs McGinty's Dead — from which the ending is cribbed. The setting, a gloomy Victorian mansion, is done well enough, but despite a "ghost" on the stairs, there is very little atmosphere of any kind, despite the clichéd pathetic fallacy of the storm. The hero, Clive Strickland, a barrister turned sensational novelist, is a prize fool. He plans an elopement and finds a corpse, but refuses to tell anyone because he wants to elope; and he nearly ruins the remarkably obvious criminal's capture at the Alhambra Theatre. Tired Carr, with too many interruptions.

Review by Xavier Lechard

I once said that I despised all of Carr's historicals that I had read and regarded Papa La-Bas as the absolute nadir of his oeuvre. Still, I recently decided to get further in my knowledge of this particular area of my all-time favorite mystery writer's output, and I gave a try to Scandal at High Chimneys whose blurb sounded promising. Alas! It did nothing but confirm that I was right but on one thing: Papa La-Bas is *not* Carr's nadir -- this one is even worse! There is no plot in sight, and characters wouldn't make it move forward anyway. They are all colorless and talk, talk, talk, usually to no amount as anyone with something to say will either be interrupted or talk in the most obscure way that is possible. Carr's usual atmospheric skills are in no better shape; they're lost (like the author) in the decorum and production values. JDC obviously did his homework but he forgot how to make a novel out of it. In short, this book is total, irredeemable drivel of the crappiest kind.