Carter Dickson Books In Order

Sir Henry Merrivale Books In Publication Order

The Plague Court Murders (1934)
The White Priory Murders (1934)
The Red Widow Murders (1935)
The Unicorn Murders (1935)
The Punch and Judy Murders (1936)
The Peacock Feather Murders (1937)
The Ten Teacups (1937)
The Judas Window (1938)
Death in Five Boxes (1938)
The Reader Is Warned (1939)
Nine and Death Makes Ten (1940)
And So to Murder (1940)
Murder in the Submarine Zone (1940)
Seeing Is Believing (1941)
The Gilded Man (1942)
She Died A Lady (1943)
He Wouldn’t Kill Patience (1944)
The Curse of the Bronze Lamp (1945)
Lord of the Sorcerers (1945)
My Late Wives (1946)
The Skeleton in the Clock (1948)
A Graveyard to Let (1949)
Night at the Mocking Widow (1950)
Behind the Crimson Blind (1952)
The Cavalier’s Cup (1953)
Red Widow Murders (1967)
Merrivale, March and Murder (1991)
Merrivale Holds the Key (1995)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

The Bowstrings Murders (1933)

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Books In Publication Order

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Go Bump in the Night (By:) (1940)
Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV (By:) (1957)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV (By:Robert Bloch,,Ray Bradbury,Robert Arthur,,Roald Dahl,,,,,,,James Francis Dwyer) (1957)
12 Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV (By:Robert Arthur) (1957)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night (By:Robert Arthur) (1961)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: More Stories for Late at Night [Unabridged] (By:) (1962)
Alfred Hitchcock’s A Hangman’s Dozen (By:Donald E Westlake,,,Ray Bradbury,Robert Arthur,Richard Matheson,,,,,,,Richard Stark) (1962)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories My Mother Never Told Me (By:Shirley Jackson,Robert Arthur,Richard Matheson,F. Scott Fitzgerald) (1963)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories Not for the Nervous (With: Ellis Peters,Dorothy L Sayers,,,Ray Bradbury,,Robert Arthur,Richard Matheson,,Michael Gilbert,,,,Julian May,,,,,,,,Margot Bennett) (1965)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Month Of Mystery (By:) (1970)
Down by the Old Blood Stream (By:) (1971)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Master’s Choice. (By:) (1979)
Stories That Go Bump In The Night: V. 1 (By:) (1982)

Sir Henry Merrivale Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

The Bowstrings Murders
(1933)

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Book Covers

Carter Dickson Books Overview

The Plague Court Murders

THE FIRST SIR HENRY MERRIVALE MYSTERY. When Dean Halliday becomes convinced that the malevolent ghost of Louis Playge is haunting his family estate in London, he invites Ken Bates and Detective Inspector Masters along to Plague Court to investigate. Arriving at night, they find his aunt and fianc e preparing to exorcise the spirit in a’s ance run by psychic Roger Darworth. While Darworth locks himself in a stone house behind Plague Court, the s ance proceeds, and at the end he is found gruesomely murdered. But who, or what, could have killed him? All the windows and doors were bolted and locked, and no one could have gotten inside. The only one who can solve the crime in this bizarre and chilling tale is locked room expert Sir Henry Merrivale.

Death in Five Boxes

Carter Dickson a.k.a. John Dickson Carr is certainly the master of the locked room mystery, a category which might as well be named after him. In ‘Death in Five Boxes,’ Carr presents not a locked room mystery but a nonetheless apparently impossible crime. A gathering of five people ends when four of them are found unconscious and nearly dead from atropine poisoning. The fifth faired far less well; he was dead, stabbed. As the room in which the five were found was not locked, the crime should be an easy one. But there’s a slight catch; it seems impossible that anyone, whether a member of the group or an outsider, could have put the poison into the drinks. Sir Henry Merrivale, Carr’s best character, is determined to solve the crime, though, and he naturally does so. Along the way, we learn that the five people who were at the table have many secrets, all of which only serve to cloud the mystery. ‘Death in Five Boxes‘ is an excellent novel for those who would like to be able finally to solve one of Carr’s puzzles. The solution is perhaps the most obvious of any of his novels or short stories, though it should be pointed out that ‘obvious’ and Carr’s name do not lend themselves to use in the same paragraph. The novel might be better for aspiring mystery novelists. With such a relatively obvious solution, the book becomes an exercise in the mastery of hiding the obvious. Though the novel is far from Carr’s best, either as a simple story or as an impossible mystery, the way in which this undisputed master goes about hiding the truth while playing entirely by the rules is something to behold.

And So to Murder

A SIR HENRY MERRIVALE MYSTERY. No one expected a clergyman’s daughter from East Roystead to author a scandalous bestseller, but when Monica Stanton published Desire she quickly got hired at Albion Films. Expecting to adapt her own work, she is instead assigned to help scriptwriter William Cartwright adapt his latest detective novel. Almost immediately, a series of mysterious attempts on her life begin, and the flamboyant Sir Henry Merrivale is called in to investigate. But can he see through the intrigue to seek out the perpetrator before it’s too late?

She Died A Lady

A SIR HENRY MERRIVALE MYSTERY. A suicide pact was just the sort of notion that would appeal to Rita Wainwright. Her notorious love affair with the young American actor, Barry Sullivan, was flamboyant enough to warrant a dramatic ending, so when the two of them vanished over a cliff one rainy night, leaving only a farewell note for Rita’s husband and a pair of footprints to the edge, no one doubted that it was suicide. No one, that is, but Doctor Luke, Rita’s old family doctor and one of the few people in the seaside village of Lyncombe who genuinely liked her. When amateur detective Sir Henry Merrivale, who is in the district having his portrait done by a local artist, agrees to investigate, the questions start piling up. But what of it? Are the doctor’s doubts without merit, or was there a more sinister plot at play? It takes the blustering, rampaging H. M. to solve this baffling mystery.

The Curse of the Bronze Lamp

A curse shall befall anyone who takes the bronze lamp out of Egypt, so a seer has said. Lady Helen Loring thinks such tales are sheer poppycock. She takes the lamp back to England, she places it on the mantelpiece at Serven Hall, and she disappears, just as the seer said.

Lord of the Sorcerers

Merrivale Holds the Key

NO MARKINGS,NO TEARS,FEW SMALL DOGEARS

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Go Bump in the Night (By:)

Published by Random House. Per the dust jacket:…
twenty three stories, a novelette, and a novel guaranteed to turn your hair white overnight.’ Stories selected by Mr. Hitchcock include: Casablanca by Thomas M. Disch, Fishhead by Irvin S. Cobb, Camera Obscura by Basil Copper, A Death in the Family by Miriam Allen deFord, Men Without Bones by Gerald Kersh, Not With a Bang by Damon Knight, Party Games by John Burke, X Marks the Pedwalk by Fritz Leiber, Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond by Nugent Barker, Two Spinsters by E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Knife by Robert Arthur, The Cage by Ray Russell, It by Theodore Sturgeon, The Road to Mictlantecutli by Adobe James, Guide to Doom by Ellis Peters, The Estuary by Margaret St. Clair, Tough Town by William Sambrot, The Troll by T. H. White, Evening at the Black House by Robert Somerlott, One of the Dead by William Wood, The Real Thing by Robert Specht, Journey to Death by Donald E. Westlake, Master of the Hounds by Algis Budrys, The Candidate by Henry Slesar, and Out of the Deeps by John Wyndham.

Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV (By:)

Alfred Hitchcock Presents 13 More Stories They Wouldn’t Let Me Do on TV (By:Robert Bloch,,Ray Bradbury,Robert Arthur,,Roald Dahl,,,,,,,James Francis Dwyer)