"The Demoniacs" by John Dickson Carr

 

Did the old lady found next to a chest of jewels in a house on old London Bridge in 1757 really die of fright? And was her death connected to a runaway heiress and her uncle's mistress? Bow Street runner Jeffrey Wynne investigates on behalf of blind Sir John Fielding.

This novel is set in Georgian London and features the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens, made famous in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding (half-brother of the real-life Sir John), Newgate prison and a pre-Tussauds waxworks, and even visiting clergyman Laurence Sterne (real-life author of Tristram Shandy and real-life member of a Hell-Fire club called The Demoniacs). It's a glorious pre-Regency romp complete with duelling and carriages careering over the cobbles at breakneck speed and scandalous secrets. There is a hideously over-complicated family tree which utterly baffled me. The identity of the murderer also baffled me but when the denouement came and the clues that had been scattered throughout the text were explained, I thought: 'Of course, of course, of course. I should have spotted that, I should have thought of that.' And that is the mark of a satisfying whodunnit. 

John Dickson Carr was a prolific writer of whodunnits, specialising in the 'locked room mystery'; he was perhaps best known for a series of books starring Dr Gideon Fell. He also wrote a number of historical murder mysteries. This is an excellent example of the genre.

Selected quotes:

• "Mrs Lavinia Cresswell, widow, could have passed for thirty anywhere except in the broad daylight most fashionable ladies avoided." (Ch 2)
• "To praise a woman because she has never exercised her sex is as though you should praise a man because he has never exercised his brains." (Ch 2)

August 2024; 216 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God