After a steady diet of Edgar Wallace novels (preparing for the recent Roundtable), I found myself feeling unsatisfied. I decided to go back and re-acquaint myself with an author whose mysteries are much more rigorous and disciplined that Wallace’s: namely, John Dickson Carr.
Carr, an American by birth, lived and worked for much of his life in England. He became known as one of the most brilliant authors of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He was so prolific that his publishers made him use pseudonyms (the most famous being “Carter Dickson”) to keep his name from growing stale.
Yet in spite of his talent and his reputation, as far as I know only three of Carr’s stories have ever been turned into feature films. I never stopped to ask myself why this might be the case… until I noticed the contrast with Edgar Wallace. Why was it that the better writer of the two had been so completely neglected by the movie industry? Here, then, are my thoughts on two of the very few movies adapted from Carr’s work:
Dangerous Crossing (1953): Based on Carr’s 1943 radio play “Cabin B-13”. A woman and her husband embark on their honeymoon cruise, but before the ship has even got underway the husband disappears. To make matters worse, the woman finds herself unable to prove that her husband ever even existed. In fact, she’s stumbled into a diabolical plot; but she may not be able to stay sane long enough to find out what really happened to her husband.
That Woman Opposite (1958): Based on the novel “The Emperor’s Snuff-Box”. Eve’s abusive ex-husband shows up just as she’s about to get re-married. The situation is bad enough when he breaks into her bedroom at night… but it soon gets worse. There is a brutal murder, and Eve finds herself the only suspect. And that’s just the beginning of Eve’s troubles…
#1 by Chad R. on December 9, 2011 - 8:47 am
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I’m sold. I’m going to read some John Dickson Carr and Michael Innes books.
#2 by Braineater on December 9, 2011 - 8:51 pm
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For Michael Innes, I can heartily recommend “Appleby’s End”. As a mystery, it’s absurd — it involves an apparent plot to turn people into statues, among other things. But it works much better as a comic novel: it starts with a bizarre, Fellini-esque trip that eventually leads John Appleby to a town named (ominously enough) Appleby’s End, and a house called Long Dream. The nearby towns are called Snarl, Drool and Linger. There’s even an old widow who thinks she’s a cow… and the whole thing comes to a head with a genuine torches-and-pitchforks witch hunt.
Don’t start with “A Comedy of Terrors”, though. The narrator of that book is a third-rate novelist… so the book is written as a pastiche in the style of a third-rate novelist. It’s very clever, once you understand what Innes is up to; but if you’re not acquainted with his style, you might think he meant it the way he wrote it.
#3 by Jen S on December 9, 2011 - 2:13 pm
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Me too!
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell…
#4 by Luke Blanchard on December 10, 2011 - 3:55 am
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I’ve read several of Carr’s books, including “The Emperor’s Snuff Box”. (I’m afraid you’ve misspelled the title, Braineater.) Reprints of the novels Carr published as Carter Dickson sometimes use that name instead of his real name. I remember “And So To Murder” as particularly funny.
Speaking of comic Golden Age mysteries, I think the climax of Edmund Crispin’s “The Moving Toyshop” was the basis of the climax of Hitchock’s version of “Strangers on a Train”.
#5 by Braineater on December 10, 2011 - 12:39 pm
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Oops! I-guess I have-a weakness for extra-dashes. I jus-t can-t h-elp my-self.
“And So To Murder” possibly explains why Carr never pushed for his own work to be adapted for the screen. His understanding of (and contempt for) movie studio politics is part of what makes the book so funny (though there’s no actual murder in it, which is a bit of a cheat).
As for Crispin… there’s a writer I cordially detest, and yet I re-read his books constantly. I find his Gervase Fen irritating and unpleasant, and I treasure every moment in his company. Go figure. But while we’re on the subject: though Crispin wrote the music for several films (Brides of Fu Manchu, anyone?), the total number of big screen adaptations of his own books (not including Hitchcock’s nod) is… zero.
#6 by kbegg on December 10, 2011 - 12:11 pm
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Coincidentally, Carr’s work is the example I generally cite when asked when I’ll get an eReader. (I work in a library, so it comes up fairly often.)
I know the devices will keep getting better and cheaper, so I’m in no rush. What I’m waiting for is the day when the collected work of out of print authors (or nearly out of print) is bundled into fairly cheap packages, say a dollar a book for however many books are in the set.
I like old time mysteries, and it makes sense to make a little money out of the ones who it wouldn’t make sense reprinting on paper. I love locked room mysteries, of which Carr is the master. However, I’ve read very little of his stuff because even back in the day when your Rex Stouts and Ellery Queens were readily available on paper, finding Carr was much more of a chore.
If nothing else, I’m hoping families decide to release their relative’s works electronically not just for the money but so that the work itself can find a new audience.
Got to happen sooner or later, I think. Buying backlog books piecemeal really doesn’t make much sense.
#7 by Braineater on December 10, 2011 - 12:50 pm
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I use very much the same argument about eReaders myself. Though I have to admit, it’s more difficult for my cats to make a nest out of an ebook (eBook? e-book? Ebook? what’s the accepted form?) than it is out of my favorite hard-to-find analog copy.
In my college days, I used to haunt second-hand bookshops snapping up all the Carr I could find. It took me years, but I used to have practically everything he wrote. But when I moved to my present house almost 16 years ago, one large box got left out in a torrential rainstorm… and that was the box that had my Carr collection in it. I had hardback first editions of “Behind the Crimson Blind” and “The Cavalier’s Cup” that got totally ruined (frankly, no great loss to literature — they’re the weakest of the Dickson series — but still a shame). Some of the paperbacks, like “Witch of the Low Tide”, I’ve never found again.
#8 by RogerBW on December 10, 2011 - 5:47 pm
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When it’s a family, you may be in with a chance. When the executors are guided by accountants, there’s an accounting trick that makes it much less likely.
If the books were successful once, but now aren’t, the rights are probably held with a nominal value of whatever was agreed last time the books were reprinted – i.e. when they were a going concern. If they’re reissued now and are less successful (quite likely, as they become historical artefacts rather than current fiction), that value has to go down – which means the estate shrinks in paper value and is generally in a poorer state (in accounting terms) than it was. So accountants will often deliberately keep something out of circulation, to avoid having to correct the nominal value.
#9 by R. Dittmar on December 20, 2011 - 6:37 pm
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One of my very first purchases for my early Christmas present (Kindle G) was the complete ouevre of S.S. Van Dine. All of his Philo Vance novels are available for a mere 7 bucks.
Vance did indeed need a kick in the pants, but several of the early ones (especially “The Bishop Murder Case”) are pretty clever.
#10 by PB210 on December 11, 2011 - 1:20 pm
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To digress somewhat, as this post deals with the formal detective story, I find intriguing that in the 1930’s and the 1940’s, studios actually produced more detective film series than horror film series.
Sleuths have tended to dominate series prose fiction since the 1910’s to the 1970’s. However, detective film series have grown rarer since the 1940’s. (In prose, horror series tended to not appear regularly-Bram Stoker wrote no sequels to Dracula, for example.) The 1930’s and the 1940’s did not produce, I suppose, that many series adventure hero series other than Tarzan, Hopalong Cassidy, etc.
#11 by kbegg on December 11, 2011 - 6:04 pm
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Well, the studios back in the ’30s and ’40s had efficient b-movie arms, which ground out films even faster than the studio’s regular output. And that doesn’t count the skid row minis like PRC.
And remember, even stars made a lot more movies back then. Bogart made 6 films in 1938, and that was pretty typical. Today stars, even really busy ones, might make two movies a year. This level of output doesn’t work particularly well with series characters. Hence TV basically becoming the home of the police procedural, etc.
Meanwhile, we’ve had generations who haven’t really grown up reading detective fiction. Even comparatively popular private eyes like Spenser and V.I. Warshawski aren’t ‘whodunnits’ in the classical sense. Therefore we’ve had, again, generations of moviegoers who have no experience with the idea that they are to solve the mystery before the detective does, as in the fair play mysteries of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie.
The Brits still do a bunch of classic mystery TV. I know that stuff is very, very popular with our patrons at the public library where I work, although the majority of them are oldtimers.
I’ll push Jonathan Creek, for instance, a very fun Brit impossible crime series.
#12 by Jason Farrell on December 12, 2011 - 12:57 pm
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Man, it’s weird (or maybe just heartening) how often my own private projects are reflected somehow by chatter on the B-Master boards.
Right now, I’m working my way through the readers guide 100 Great Detectives by Maxim Jakubowski. I know already that neither Carr or Innes are at my local library. I know for a fact that I read or started to read THE BURNING COURT but I can’t remember anything much.
More’s the pity.
#13 by Luke Blanchard on December 13, 2011 - 8:26 am
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Some of Carr’s radio plays are apparently in the public domain. “Cabin B-13” was an episode of “Suspense” and can be found at Internet Archive (as the episode for 43-11-9).
Carr wrote short stories as well as novels, so you might be able to find one of those in an anthology. However, I don’t know he was at his best in the form.
It’s not the dash, Braineater: that was my error. It’s “emperor”.
#14 by Braineater on December 13, 2011 - 8:55 am
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Huh. Funny how many times I can look at that and not see it.
It’s one of those words where my poorly-trained fingers type the pattern backwards… Since I’m a rotten typist, I find myself doing that fairly often, but I’m usually better at catching it. Anyway, it should be fixed now.