The Judas Window (1938)
Blurb:
My review:
Although widely believed to be the best of the Merrivales, The Judas Window, while very good indeed, is not outstanding. H.M. acts as counsel for the defence, his client, Jimmy Answell, accused of murdering his prospective father-in-law in the locked and bolted study. He deducts, rather than detects, for the facts are already known to him in preparing the case; with this in mind, the reader may still wonder why the case ever came to trial, for, although H.M. explains his reasons satisfactorily enough at the end, the reader may still suspect that H.M. (and Carr) wanted a grand courtroom drama. Although the book is one of Carr's tightest jobs, in which the placing of clues and deductions is superb, the solution to the locked room, the "Judas Window" of the title, is ingenious and practical, but ultimately disappointing; and the murderer's identity is a decided anti-climax. Indeed, the characters are all very flat, and the book moves much more slowly than the average Carr novel.