The Plague Court Murders (1934)
Blurb:
My review:
This 1934 novel, which introduced Sir Henry Merrivale, is easily the best of the Merrivales. Although somewhat over-written in parts, Carr recognises the effectiveness of understatement in conveying the haunted house and its malevolent ghost, supported by the Plague-Journal, a document which M.R. James Himself would have been proud to have written. The murder of the fraudulent psychic and murderer, stabbed to death in a locked room, is one of Carr's most ingeniously worked-out crimes, and is as equally ingeniously unravelled by the Mycroftian Sir Henry Merrivale, who does a brilliant job of working out which of the gargoyles committed the murder and how. It is certain that no reader will ever get the murderer’s identity, very cleverly hidden from the reader; yet the clues are all there, as they are to the method, which, like the identity of the murderer, is thoroughly unexpected.