The Door To Doom (1980) by John Dickson Carr

Readers unfamiliar with The Door to Doom and Other Detections (1980) may prefer to read these notes only after reading the book.

In his introduction to the story collection The Door To Doom (1980), editor Douglas Greene defines Carr's appeal:

Sometimes in the same book, unspeakable horrors exist side by side with uproarious comedy. Part of Carr’s mastery of the detective novel was this ability to combine the terrifying atmosphere of Edgar Allan Poe with the humor of P. G. Wodehouse.

Despite the fact that Carr wrote in the mood of neo-gothic horror or high comedy, almost all his novels are formal detective stories. No detective novelist was more scrupulous in giving every clue to the reader and in presenting rational explanations of all the seeming impossibilities. Carr handled clues, suspects and motives with such dexterity that few readers are able to predict the solutions.

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"The Legend of the Cane in the Dark" (1926) makes for interesting reading next to "New Murders …