The Witch of the Low Tide (1961)
Blurb:
My review:
Quite possibly the best of the late John Dickson Carr novels, this historical (England, June 1907) vividly evokes the Edwardian seaside resort at which a devil-worshipping and blackmailing prostitute is strangled on a beach (no footprints, of course), presumably by her sister, with whom the neurologist hero, Dr. David Garth, is in love. The romance is sensibly handled, without adolescent fits of jealousy, and Dr. Garth's duel of wits with the obnoxious Inspector Twigg is well done. The identity of the murderer is particularly well hidden, the motive hinging upon sexual psychology and a reversal of the situation in The Sleeping Sphinx; and, although the solution to the impossible crime recycles ideas from Gaston Leroux's Mystère de la chambre jaune (a ludicrous and badly-written book about which Carr waxes lyrical) and the earlier White Priory Murders (1934), it is cleverly done.