I enjoyed The Burning Court, by John Dickson Carr, more than the novels of any of these ladies. There is a tinge of black magic that gives it a little of the interest of a horror story, and the author has a virtuosity at playing with alternative hypotheses that makes this trick of detective fiction more amusing than it usually is.

The Burning Court (Carr, 1937) is many people's favourite and also extraordinary. Yes, but the detective, a non-recurring character, is commonplace; true, the structure demands that he should be commonplace, but I still miss Dr Fell. That apart, the enterprise is of irreproachable quality. As a series of crimes develops, it seems more and more inescapable that they have been done by witchcraft. In due course the investigating detective propounds a solution of the crimes whereby every known fact is naturalistically and convincingly explained. That brings matters to the last couple of pages, of which I will say nothing.

Words like 'gripping' and 'absorbing' should have been allowed to remain in the womb of language until the advent of Carr/Dickson. His reader feels more than the pressure of ordinary suspense or the desire to follow an exciting and puzzling story. There is an almost painful curiosity besides, a looking for deliverance from the incredible. The hero of The Burning Court comes across, in the most prosaic way possible, a photograph of a Frenchwoman who according to the caption was guillotined for murder in 1861. 'He was looking at a photograph of his own wife.' End of Chapter One. There must be those who, on reaching that point for the first time, would be able to lay the book aside and go out to a Mahler concert, say, without turning a hair. Not I; I had a hard enough time just now getting my copy back on to its shelf after checking that reference.