Carr, John Dickson - The Bride of Newgate (1950)

Review by Nick Fuller

4/5

Carr's first historical detective novel — and one of his finest. Every conceivable aspect of 1815 that could lend itself to excitement, tragedy or melodrama is so used: the Battle of Waterloo, the last-minute repeal of an accused murderer married not one hour before to an ice maiden, duels with sabre and with pistol, and a riot at the Opera. Throughout, the reader is kept wondering about the identity of the murderer of Lord Orford, and of the coachman wrapped in graveyard mould. Superb misdirection, and a particularly clever solution to the locked room, although the murderer's identity is, although hardly suspected, perhaps an anti-climax.