John Carr - The Plague Court Murders

H.M. stared down into the dying fire. His back jerked a little, and he blinked round uncomprehendingly.

"Let him-? Son, didn't you know?" -

"Know what?"

"No, of course," said H.M. dully. "We didn't stay in that infernal yard you didn't see....”

"Let him get away? Not exactly. I said, `Son, I'm goin' out of this room-' this was when we were at his flat. I said, `You've got a service revolver, haven't you?' And he said, `Yes.' And I said, 'Well, I'm goin' now. If I thought you had a chance to escape hangin', I shouldn't advise it.' And he said, `Thank you.' "

"You mean he shot himself?"

"I thought he was goin' to; the way he looked then.... I said, `You couldn't tell a court what you've told me, could you? It would only look like hidin." Well, he saw that.

"But she must have been an amazin' woman, Glenda. What did that young fool do? He joined the party that arrested Glenda, but he couldn't get close enough for a word, Masters tells me. Masters didn't know about him then. We came out with them to Plague Court. Don't you understand the meanin' of those shots, man? Shrimp had no sooner done his demonstration, and the crowd of 'em were standin' in the yard, than McDonnell walks out in front of 'em with a gun and says, 'There's a taxi around the corner, Glenda. I've had it waiting. Make a bolt for it. I'll hold these chaps till you can make it.' The God blasted young fool! - his last gesture, y'see, cool as ice, holdin' up the whole crowd...."

"Then those two shots-McDonnell fired-?"

"No, son. Glenda looked at him. She took out her own weapon as she got out from Masters' men. She said, `Thanks' to McDonnell. Then she fired two bullets into his head just before she ran.

"She died in the right place, son. She and Louis Playge - they both belong there."

JOHN DICKSON CARR

The man many readers think of as the most British of detective story writers was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania in 1906. After attending Haverford College, Can went to Paris where, his parents hoped, he would continue his education at the Sorbonne. Instead he became a writer. His first novel, It Walks By Night, was published in 1929. Shortly thereafter, Carr married and settled in his wife's native country, England.

The Thirties were a highly prolific period for Carr, who was turning out three to five novels a year. Some of these were published under what became his most famous nom de plume, Carter Dickson.

In 1965 Carr left England and moved to Greenville, South Carolina, where he remained until his death in 1977.

In his lifetime, Carr received the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of only two Americans (the other was Patricia Highsmith) ever admitted into the prestigious - but almost exclusively British - Detection Club. In his famous essay "The Grandest Game in the World," Can listed the qualities always present in the detective novel at its best: fair play, sound plot construction, and ingenuity. (He added, "Though this quality of ingenuity is not necessary to the detective story as such, you will never find the great masterpiece without it.") That these qualities are prevalent in Carr's work is obvious to his legions of readers. In the words of the great detective novelist-critic Edmund Crispin, "For subtlety, ingenuity, and atmosphere, he was one of the three or four best detective-story writers since Poe that the English language has known."