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In general I like Carr's Bencolin stories, but this is my favorite of those and one of my favorites of all his work. Ralph Douglas's ex-mistress Rose Klonec is murdered in circumstances suggesting she had met with him again and four weapons on the scene, all unused. Bencolin comes out of retirement to save him, but the climax is when Bencolin's young friend Curtis has a marvelous run at basset, a 17th century card game, and his unpleasant opponent brings out the murdered woman's jewels to cover his bet --the man is not the murderer, but has important information. ( )

I was having difficulty summing up my thoughts on this book, so I decided to see what the LibraryThing Oracle said about my chances of liking it:

LibraryThing thinks you will love The Four False Weapons. Prediction confidence: medium

That about sums it up: I too thought I would love The Four False Weapons. There are times when a mystery reader really just wants to sit back and watch a devilishly complicated story unfold before her. And I had about the same confidence level, because I'd read another book by Carr and was at least familiar with his work, if not the detective in this instance (Mr. Henri Bencolin).

The beginning is promising: a woman named Rose Klonec is found dead in a house owned by a former lover, Ralph Douglas. She was supposed to be having an assignation with him, despite his being engaged to another girl (he dumped her and was the only man to have done so; she dumped her other lovers). And there's some confusion as to how she was killed: in the room there is a stiletto, a box of pills, a freshly sharpened razor and a pistol. The suspects have seemingly unassailable alibis. How will M. Bencolin solve the case?

Answer: maddeningly. The clues might be there, but they are so subtle in places that they're very easy to miss. Also, with each explanation of the case, the suspects, motive and method change with dizzying rapidity -- "This one did it and here is a solid explanation as to why. Except NOT REALLY!!!! It's this person. Here's how they did it. EXCEPT NOT REALLY!!!!!" Repeat ad nauseam. By the two-thirds mark I was just plain exhausted from it all and almost didn't give a damn who actually committed the crime. It could have been Rose's brother-in-law's cousin's dog, for all I cared. But I did see it through to the end, even working my way through the mildly boring gambling den scene -- I tend to skip over that sort of scene in literature (e.g. Casino Royale, Cards on the Table) because for me, card games, like golf, are more fun to play than to watch. But overall I found the story great fun, with amusingly over-the-top characters (e.g. the tabloid criminologist, the French police) and at least one aspect of the denouement proved most satisfactory.

So with a promising beginning and a maddening ending (albeit somewhat expected in its twists and turns), how do I rate this? Do I focus on the positive experience I had for the first half the book and assert "At least the twistiness met my expectations"? Or do I come down on the side of frustration and knock off some stars? On balance I say yes, it did meet my expectations, so three stars it is, with the caveat that if you're going to read this, prepare to be bamboozled. ( )

I've always been fond of John Dickson Carr's locked room mysteries, but this is one I come back to again and again, because it's a lighthearted visit to Paris in the thirties, a Paris that died in the second world war. It's charming, it's funny, it's fascinating, and you'll never guess who the murderer is! ( )