Plus, we get a map!!! Well, that was a bit of a disappointment actually! The second I turned the page and saw a floor layout, the first thought in my mind was “ oh my god, he stuck the impossible crime in the last third of the book!!!” Well, as I’ve mentioned up front, there is no impossible crime. And, we’re treated to one of the more astonishing killer reveals in Carr’s repertoire (which is saying a lot). We get a tense scene as Marle goes undercover in the mysterious club. I won’t delve excessively into details, but be prepared not to put the book down. ![]() The entire second half of the book careens out of control. ![]() This isn’t typical Carr! He must still have something up his sleeve. So much of the book was left, and yet some really core questions had been answered. ![]() Only the identity of the killer and a few minor details remain, but we’re given a remarkable layout of how the crime was committed. Much in the fashion that you expect from the final chapter of a Carr novel, the detective unravels the crime and explains the nuances of the crime scene. The Corpse in the Waxworks progresses mostly along this vein for the first half.ġ0 chapters in (with nine remaining), Bencolin pretty much provides the solution to the mystery. Although we no doubt encounter interesting twists in these interrogations, there’s a predictability to the plot in that you can know the set of people who must be questioned, and so you can somewhat anticipate what the next 5 chapters are going to look like. This is where I tend to find Carr faltering and the stories start to plod. The detective (Bencolin, Merrivale, or Fell) is accompanied by the point-of-view-character on a sequence of interviews with a known cast of witnesses. You know the type if you’ve read The Ten Teacups, The White Priory Murders, or It Walks By Night. Once the crime is exposed, the book takes a turn towards what I’ll disparagingly call “conventional Carr investigation”. Early on, we do get the impression that the crime somehow ties into a mysterious club next to the waxworks, where the elite of Paris meet behind masks for anonymous encounters with the opposite sex. The sense of dread in this early scene is a progression from The Lost Gallows and Castle Skull and sees Carr honing his skills for future works to come, such as The Crooked Hinge and The Problem of the Green Capsule.Īs for the mystery, there isn’t enough of a high level hook for me to go into, and I don’t want to dwell on specifics of the crime scene that you’re better off experiencing in your own reading. Is the killer lurking among the wax figures? The author plays this angle against the reader, augmenting it with a number of macabre sets in the museum’s chamber of horrors. Any reader with a basic whiff of the plot knows that a murder victim is going to be found, and so it is very natural to read into the surroundings. Marle’s investigation of the waxworks had me fully on edge, which is natural given the setting. As Marle and Bencolin explore the waxworks, they make a gruesome discovery – the body of another young woman is slumped across the arms of a wax satyr.Ĭarr starts strong with this one – he lays on the atmosphere and he lays it on thick. The victim was last seen entering a waxwork museum several days prior, but never leaving. Marle is accompanying Bencolin on an investigation into the death of a young woman whose body was found in the Seine river. ![]() The Corpse in the Waxworks finds us back in Paris with Jeff Marle, the point of view narrator from all previous Bencolin books. Despite featuring a heart pounding finale, Carr’s overall narrative skills weren’t quite yet to the level of holding a full novel without the lure of an impossibility. Being an overall fan of Carr’s style of writing, and knowing that he can deliver the goods without even a whiff of an impossibility ( The Emperor’s Snuff Box, Death Watch), why not give it a try? I suspect I was held back by my experience with The Lost Gallows, another early Bencolin work that lacks a strong puzzle. Couple that with the back of the book jacket description basically amounting to “ a woman is found dead in the arms of a satyr in a waxworks”. In part, it was my knowledge that it doesn’t feature an impossible crime. For some reason, I’ve never felt drawn to The Corpse in the Waxworks.
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