Featured Author:
John Dickson Carr
If you characterize John Dickson Carr as anything, it might be as an English gentleman who was solid and well-bred in his lordly ways. Yet he wasn’t any of those things.
Carr (1906-77) was born in the United States, the son of a US Congressman from Pennsylvania. He spent most of his twenties and thirties living in England, although if you look at his youth he certainly appears to have taken on the English style very early on in life.
As a writer he focused on Englishmen as his main characters, one of the few Americans to do so. He did it so well that he became a major contributor to the Golden Age of mystery fiction, and became the first American member of The Detection Club. Dorothy L. Sayers herself wrote about one of his books that “he can write — not merely in the negative sense of observing the rules of syntax, but in the sense that every sentence gives a thrill of positive pleasure. This is the most attractive mystery I have read for a long time.”
Carr wrote under a number of pseudonyms, but it was as himself that the Dr. Gideon Fell mysteries were published, and would go on to be his most successful series. He also wrote plays, and during the war worked in radio for British propaganda.
Carr’s later years were spent in the United States, where his writing slowed down, although he kept publishing up until his death. Probably an alcoholic and addicted to prescription drugs, he went on binges where he lost control of himself. Brought out of his mania—usually by his wife—he would leap into his books, writing frantically for weeks at a time to complete them.
Throughout his life Carr smoked and drank too much and had numerous affairs, which his wife didn’t seem to mind. He was in many ways the life of the party, and in some ways a rather detestable character. His books are somewhat forgotten today, but are an important part of the history of the genre.
This is an imagined interview between CozyMystery.com (CM) and John Dickson Carr (JDC). It has been synthesized from various articles with John Dickson Carr over the years. All quotes from John Dickson Carr are his own words. Items in square brackets are where we have altered his words for clarity or to avoid spoilers. Please see the end of the article for source credits.
Childhood
CM: As a young man you became a reader of mysteries.
JDC: Though my youth was much influenced by Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes, a still greater influence came from Chesterton’s short detective stories about Father Brown.
CM: But you weren’t intended to become a writer?
JDC: My father’s idea was that I should also go into the legal profession, but he indulged me… I went off to Paris.
CM: Where he sent you to study?
JDC: This being probably the only thing in Paris I did not do.
Early stories
CM: Where do you get your inspiration from?
JDC: I’ve had exactly one hundred and twenty complete plots outlined, for emergencies, since I was eleven years old.
CM: Your early stories, before you went into detective fiction, were much more vivid and fanciful.
JDC: I used to believe that all the readers would find my stuff as dull as ditchwater unless I whooped up the grotesqueness everywhere, and turned all my characters into jumping‐jacks.
CM: You carried some of that into your most successful stories?
JDC: I like some vividness of colour and imagination in my plot, since I cannot find a story enthralling solely on the grounds that it sounds as though it might really have happened.
CM: And you disdain several styles of detective stories, such as noir, thrillers, and suspense.
JDC: Broadly speaking a thriller may be defined as a story in which the detective-problem is not of paramount importance because the detective never sits still long enough to think about it.
CM: But there are similarities?
JDC: The detective novel at its best will contain three qualities seldom found in the thriller. It will contain the quality of fair play in presenting the clues. It will contain the quality of sound plot construction. And it will contain the quality of ingenuity.
The Mystery
CM: Let’s talk about plotting a mystery. What’s the key?
JDC: Here and there a casual remark that, unknown to the reader, is the keynote to the plot.
CM: You have compared your stories to the act of a magician.
JDC: The art of the murderer… is the same as the art of the magician. And the art of the magician does not lie in any such nonsense as “the hand is quicker than the eye” but consists simply in directing your attention to the wrong place. He will cause you to be watching one hand, while with the other hand, unseen though in full view he produces his effect.
CM: So you tend to hide your clues in plain sight, but direct the reader away from them.
JDC: Write a lie as though it were true, and the reader, intent on his own detecting, will swallow it…. Clues should be stressed in different parts of the book, and a good clue should be given at least twice. The most important clue should sound like the wildest nonsense; in placing a cryptic clue, be sure that your reader never sees it at eye-level.
CM: And this is the basis of a good mystery novel?
JDC: The fine detective story, be it repeated, does not consist of “a” clue. It is a ladder of clues, a pattern of evidence, joined together with such cunning that even the experienced reader may be deceived: until, in the blaze of the surprise ending, he suddenly sees the whole design.
CM: As long as the clues are there for the reader to find?
JDC: Your craftsman knows, as Dr. R. Austin Freeman long ago pointed out, that it is not at all necessary to mislead the reader. Merely state your evidence, and the reader will mislead himself.
CM: And you keep building on clue after clue?
JDC: Let the evidence not all be thrown at us in a lump; but let it grow up as the story unfolds, so that each new turn is a surprise to us as it was to those who saw it happen.
CM: You said once that the goal of the writer is to make it look as though nothing is happening.
JDC: Once we think an author is only skylarking, a whole bandwagon of clues can go past unnoticed.
The Sleuth
CM: How do you create your detective characters?
JDC: The great detective is the one who can visualize the board as it has been when he finds the pieces jumbled.
CM: Do you struggle to make each of them interesting in themselves?
JDC: I wish I could enlarge my range of character types, since I find myself writing about the same old people under different names.
CM: What do you think is the detective’s role?
JDC: The detective story is a conflict between criminal and detective in which the criminal, by means of some ingenious device – alibi, novel murder method, or what you like – remains unconvicted or even unsuspected until the detective reveals his identity by means of evidence which has also been conveyed to the reader.
CM: So it has to be realistic to the reader?
JDC: A great part of our liking for detective fiction is based on a liking for improbability.
CM: Any last words?
JDC: Let me know if you have encountered any good detective stories.
Do you have anything to say about this article? Agree or disagree with what we have to say? Let us know in the comments below.
Credits
All quotes in this article are by John Dickson Carr. Some are taken from his books, some from an essay he wrote, and the majority from a biography of Carr written by Douglas Greene.
The Grandest Game in the World by John Dickson Carr was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine in March 1963
Douglas G. Greene. John Dickson Carr: the man who explained miracles. Otto Penzler, 1995
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