Review: The Plague Court Murders

The Plague Court Murders 
by Carter Dickson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I wasn't sure about this book at the start. The backstory about the history of the house (Plague Court is the name of a house) was a bit too old-fashioned and gothic for me. Once H.M. comes into it the pace picked up considerably and once the mystery of the locked room started to unravel I couldn't put it down. I don't want to give away the solution, but I will say that it was a very clever crime and that all the clues were there (though they are spelled clews which I thought was weird) if I had been sharp enough to spot them. 

This book (first published in 1934) counts toward the Vintage Mystery Challenge. It is a locked room mystery, but I am going to count it in the category Things That Go Bump in the Night: a mystery with something spooky, creepy, gothic in the title (The Skeleton in the Clock, Haunted Lady, The Bat, etc.) because Plague Court is a haunted house and the first theory about the murder (I'm not saying if it holds up or not) is that it was committed by a ghost.

Challenge: Vintage Mysteries 2013

My Reader's Block is hosting the Vintage Mystery 2013 Challenge which I have decided to take on. Basically the challenge is to read 8 vintage mysteries (defined as written before 1960) during 2013 which fit into a set of categories (one book per category) defined on the challenge page.

I am little concerned about being able to actually get my hands on copies of the books to meet this challenge, but I am excited about reading more vintage mysteries. Some of the titles I am considering at this point are Why Shoot a Butler? by Georgette Heyer, The Black Dudley Murder by Margery Allingham (a locked room mystery from 1929), and Nine Wrong Answers by John Dickson Carr. There were a lot of vintage mystery authors discussed in the Alfred Hitchcock bio I just finished which I may want to read as well: British author Edgar Wallace known as "king of the thriller" (p. 124); Edwin Greenwood, author of various mysteries including The Deadly Dowager and Miracle in the Drawing Room (p.160); The Wheel Spins (1936) by Ethel Lina White upon which The Lady Vanishes was based (p. 206); Francis Iles' Before the Fact (1932, p. 267) or Malice Aforethought (1931, p. 278). Books by Dorthy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Agatha Christie are also strong possibilities.