Reviews for The Plague Court Murders

The average rating for The Plague Court Murders based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-26 00:00:00 Shane Brashear Set down in the midst of decaying brick buildings, gaunt and crooked against the dawn, with their blind windows staring into it, this yard was uncanny in its desolation. You felt that no church-bells, or street-organs, or any homely, human sound could ever penetrate it. The Plague Court Murders (1934) by Carter Dickson [John Dickson Carr] is the first in the Sir Henry (H. M.) Merrivale mysteries by the locked room master. It is a nice little puzzle with gothic and supernatural undertones and a thoroughly unpleasant villain. Merrivale comes into the story about mid-way. We begin with Ken Blake at his club. He is approached by an old friend, Dean Halliday, with an unusual request. He wants Blake to come with him that very night and join him at a vigil at a haunted house. The house in question belongs to Halliday's family and has a history of murder and death. It is said to be haunted by the ghost of the original owner, one Louis Playge who was a hangman and died in mysterious circumstances during the years of the Plague. Halliday's aunt, Lady Benning, and fiancee Marion Latimer are devotees of a medium/psychic and are determined to hold a vigil in the house while Roger Darworth and his medium, a young boy named Joseph, work to purge the house of its ghosts. Halliday wants Blake's assistance to prove the psychic a charlatan and they both call upon Chief Inspector Masters of the Yard (who dabbles in the art of exposing psychic fakes himself) to lend a hand. Meanwhile, the Playge Dagger--originally belonging to the hangman and donated by the Halliday family to a London Museum--has been stolen. During the vigil, Halliday, his aunt, fiancee and her brother Ted, and Major Featherton (family friend) stay together in a room while Darworth is installed in a lonely stone building in the courtyard. The door is locked (both outside and in), the widows are closely barred, and surrounding the building is about thirty feet of smooth mud. And, yet, during the night Darworth will apparently be stabbed to death by a ghostly hand wielding the missing Playge Dagger. Masters is sure it's murder by a human hand, but can't see how the thing was done. Locked room expert, Sir Henry Merrivale is pressed into service "one more time" to show them all how it was done. I enjoyed the atmosphere of this one--especially with all the details from the years of Louis Playge. It gave the story a nice ghost-story feel. Of course, H.M. dumps cold water on the idea that any supernatural forces are at play, but the build-up to the murders is very nicely done. The plot is not quite a smoothly polished as later Dickson novels will be, but it still a clever puzzle and Dickson manages to show you how it was done while firmly telling you that it couldn't have been done that way. Nobody says you have to believe characters implicitly when they tell you things....★★★ and 3/4. First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. Please request permission before reposting any review content. Thanks.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-11-02 00:00:00 Joshua Bailey The Plague Court Murders is the first in a series featuring Sir Henry Merrivale, noted expert on crime, barrister, physician and all around smart guy when it comes to solving the unsolvable. Carter Dickson is one of the pseudonyms of Golden-Age mystery writer John Dickson Carr, and this book definitely falls within at category. The reader is presented with an impossible crime, with several suspects and a number of red herrings. In the introduction to this edition, it is noted that Carr was a fan of the great Houdini, as well as spiritualism and haunted-house stories; he combined elements of all three in putting together this story. As it begins, a Mr. Dean Halliday is explaining to Ken Blake that his family home, called Plague Court, is supposedly haunted, and he invites Blake and another friend, Inspector Masters, to go with him that very night to attend a seance. Masters is interested because the seance will be handled by Roger Darworth, who is a subject under surveillance by the police, along with his medium, Joseph. But during the seance something goes terribly wrong, and Darworth, who is alone, and locked in to a small stone building on the property, ends up murdered. The police are totally baffled by this impossible crime, and turn to Sir Henry Merrivale (often called "Mycroft") for help. Like a lot of Carr's work, this one is a bit long, and the prose a bit stilted and sometimes archaic. The language may try the patience of modern mystery readers (it was written in the 1930s), and also, we don't really meet Sir Henry until late in the game. The story just kind of drags until after Darworth's murder, when it begins only then to pick up some speed. And, while the core mystery is well plotted, I wasn't overwhelmed by the solution. I will say that it was fun watching things unravel, and I was definitely wrong in my choice of murderer. As noted, modern mystery readers may be a bit put off by the language and the slowness of the story at times, but those readers who are fans of books written during the Golden Age of Mystery will probably enjoy it.