Carr, John Dickson as Carter Dickson - My Late Wives (1946)

Review by Xavier Lechard

What a difference twenty years (or so) make. Coming after historical dreck Scandal at High Chimneys this post-war HM entry looks almost refreshing despite its flaws, which probably accounts for me enjoying it more than first time I read it, some fifteen years ago. While Scandal at High Chimneys had much decorum but zero atmosphere, "My Late Wives" is packed with creepy, sinister ambiance even though not much happens. Carr is at his writing best here, and his depiction of the "terror house" is one of his finest achievements on that respect. He also delivers some of his best characterization: Commandant Renwick, theatre-lover Chittering and Beryl West, one of the most convincing female characters JDC ever created.

Still, the book is far from perfect. As I said above, not much happens. There are some good scenes and genuine tension (the corpse business) but most of the action is actually inaction: pointless discussions and delayed revelations leading to an overlong finale - like the Strokes would say, "the end has no end". Also, comic relief is more distracting than genuinely funny.

Carr fans will probably not follow me here, maybe throwing stones at the blasphemer, but I think My Late Wives would've been a better novel if HM hadn't been in there. Actually, I think My Late Wives would've been better without any detective at all.

One commonly accepted reason for Carr's slow decline after the war is that he no longer felt happy with the world he lived in, and subsequently lost his grip. This is most probably true, but I think of another explanation: Carr no longer felt at home in the orthodox detective story. The radio plays he wrote during and after the war had a strong influence on him: he discovered not only a new medium but also new ways to tell a mystery story. Several books of this period show his will to change in subjects, structure: The Emperor's Snuff-Box or She Died A Lady comes to mind. Even My Late Wives has a premise that is quite different from his earlier works. I think Carr may have contemplated the possibility of following his colleagues and compatriots Ellery Queen's or Helen McCloy's examples of taking a less orthodox, more character-driven approach and (in the latter's case) emphasizing suspense over detection. Either he couldn't make his mind up or his publishers or readers didn't want him to go that path, but he only coyly went beyond simple contemplation, at least in the HM and GF he wrote increasingly hardly after the war. And that's maybe why he finally got into the historical thing: not having to provide a series character and being in a largely new territory, he was able to experiment and The Devil in Velvet and Bride of Newgate show that. Alas, it was too late for starting a new career and illness as well as disenchantment didn't help.

I have to disagree with Xavier on this one. For me this is vintage Carr, with H.M. at his very best. The plot starts with a flashback: the history of the murderer Roger Bewlay, who managed to kill three wives in succession and hide their bodies without being detected, and who -- despite a police guard and an eye-witness -- disappeared into thin air after the death of his fourth wife was reported. Some writers would have spent a hundred pages on Bewlay's early history: Carr tells us all we need to know in four.

Back to the present day in post-war England. Masters, in frustration, has at last brought the case to H.M., but other parties are also taking an interest. Bruce Ransom, the actor, has received an anonymous and unsolicited script for a play about Bewlay's career. He wants to test the plausibility of the ending, set in a small village, and picks Aldebridge on the south coast, apparently at random, to host his impersonation of Roger Bewlay. His friends Dennis Foster and Beryl West try and dissuade him; but the police are curiously uninterested, and Bruce sets off to try the act. An urgent telegram calls Beryl and Dennis down to Aldebridge two weeks later. Bruce is in severe trouble -- in fact he's been saddled with a corpse -- but luckily H.M. and Masters are already on the spot.

There are no holds barred in this story; red herrings abound, and the savvy reader will have to go over every page carefully to disentangle the facts from the interested parties' versions of the facts. Clues are fair and it is possible to reach the end with a good idea of who the murderer is, but anyone who picks up all the hints can give themselves a very high score. H.M. is less prominent and a little more subdued than usual, but his golfing activities provide a good deal of humour, particularly the dry interventions of his Scottish professional Mr MacFergus.

A first-rate puzzle.

Jon.