Brian Innes is a forty-six-year-old Englishman living in Geneva. Audrey Page is a twenty-seven-year-old Englishwoman visiting a friend there, retired film star Eve Ferrier. Audrey's father writes to Brian asking him to intervene, citing a mysterious death in Eve's past as evidence of her shady reputation. But despite her assurances to Brian, Audrey does go to the Villa Rosalind, and another mysterious death takes place. Brian becomes entangled with it, as does Eve's husband, also an actor, his secretary and his son. Luckily Dr. Fell is on the spot to sort it all out...
Carr wrote a few good books in the Sixties, but this isn't one of them. It doesn't have much of the clumsy description-masquerading-as-dialogue which mars many of his later works, though it does jump around unnecessarily between real-time recounts and recollection. What the book mainly lacks is conviction. Dr. Fell's part is relatively small, and some of his thunder is stolen by another investigator, Sir Gerald Hathaway. We are promised two murders, and given only one, and the murder method itself is highly improbable. We're also asked to believe that someone can fire three shots from an automatic at point-blank range in a crowded nightclub without doing any damage or attracting any attention. Carr's rhetorical flourishes seem less convincing somehow in the modern surroundings of a cosmopolitan city, and the cat is let out of the bag long before the final dramatic moment.
For collectors only.
Jon.
See also:http://deathcanread.blogspot.it/2014/06/john-dickson-carr-in-spite-of-thunder.html