Carr, John Dickson - Patrick Butler for the Defence (1956)

Review by Nick Fuller

2/5

Having, much to the reader's horror and incredulity, introduced the character of Patrick Butler as a colossally thick-headed and impetuous Watson in Below Suspicion, Carr now makes matters worse by making Butler the detective of one of his weakest books. The plot concerns a Persian, Abu of Ispahan, who tells the lawyer hero of swindling and murder, and is promptly stabbed to death, living only long enough to gasp out "Your gloves" before dying. At this point, the reader is in full possession of the principal clue, and only a numbskull will fail to spot the murderer. Patrick Butler, however, takes a while to cotton on, and is not merely stupid but completely insufferable, outranking both Nero Wolfe and [Van Dine, SSPhilo Vance: an exhibitionist, who spends his entire time making a nuisance of himself, and issteadfastly rude to the other characters, calling the ginch heroine "a spoiled brat of whom it may be said that only your intelligence is virgin", before pinching her behind (and the anatomy of the other characters; almost as “entertaining” as the similar scenes in Panic in Box C, in which entire chapters are devoted to the adolescent bickerings between the hero and his estranged wife about whether he did or did not “goose” her on an escalator…) It is not surprising that his wife has committed suicide.

The plot then degenerates into a pointless chase, beginning with a largely irrelevant fight scene in an antique shop and going downhill from there to the point where the hero throws his sweetheart's father through a window. Unlike the chases in The Blind Barber or The Punch and Judy Murders, there are no clues concealed in this mess, and the murder is obscured by a flurry of hyperactivity. A particularly tiresome romance does not help, especially not when burdened down with needless complications as to whether Hugh Prentice loves his fiancée, Monica Dean, one of the more unpleasant of the many unpleasant characters in the book (and what does Patrick Butler see in her?), or the reincarnated ginch, Lady Pamela de Saxe (this being late period Carr, as opposed to the well-drawn women of the late 1930s and 1940s, guess which one he chooses?).