From one piece of pure escapism to another – although this book is very different to my last read, “The Day They Kidnapped Queen Victoria”! John Dickson Carr has appeared on the Ramblings many times, of course – and most recently because the British Library have been releasing his Inspector Bencolin mysteries in lovely new editions. Bencolin is not Carr’s best-known detective, only featuring in five novels and a handful of short stories; but those works are wonderfully entertaining, and I’m so happy they’re being made available.

The latest release, “The Lost Gallows” is the third Bencolin release from the BL, but the second in the Bencolin series; and it finds the great detective, plus his sidekick, the young American Jeff Marle, in London. The men are staying at the rather gloomy and macabre Brimstone Club, alongside an old friend of Bencolin’s, Sir John Landervorne. Also at the club is the unpleasant (and very rich) Egyptian gentleman, Nezam El Moulk, together with his retinue. However, all is not well; events from the past are coming back to haunt and threaten El Moulk; a ghostly hangman known as Jack Ketch is making appearances; and the lost gallows of the title has been seen in Ruination Street, a mysterious place which cannot be found anywhere in London. Stir in Jeff’s old flame Sharon Grey (who featured in the first book of the series), murder and mayhem and a car driven by a corpse, dark corridors, mysterious models or shadows of gallows which pop up everywhere, and plenty of chills, and you have the perfect recipe for one of Carr’s stories – which to be honest, are often like a cross between a mystery and a ghost story, and no less satisfying for it!

I love JDC’s writing – he does of course specialise in the locked room mystery with his other great detective, Gideon Fell; and there are certainly locked room elements in the Bencolin stories. These are early works, and Carr tends to lay on the melodrama, which I don’t mind at all, and the stories are spooky and gripping. “The Lost Gallows” was particularly dark, drawing on events back to the First World War, and the settings (particularly the Club, but also London itself) oozed dark atmosphere. The denouement was very dramatic – Carr really knows how to ramp up the tension – and Bencolin of course was triumphantly right in his solution of the crime.

An early, and somewhat grimmer, edition of the book…

Of course, this *is* a vintage murder mystery; and I do have slight reservations about the portrayal of El Moulk. He was less cliched than you might expect from a book of this age, but I did wonder whether having a non-English person in this negative role was necessary. Another subsidiary character is portrayed using terminology we wouldn’t nowadays, but neither of these characterisations were too strong so I was ok with the book. And frankly, Carr is hard on a lot of his characters, whatever their origin – he does like to lay it on with a trowel at times! 😀

As well as the main story, there is also a rare Bencolin short story included called “The Ends of Justice”. This dates from an earlier period to “Gallows” and is an interesting, if stark and dramatic, adjunct to the main book. As Martin Edwards reminds us in his useful introduction, Carr was an author still learning his craft; and he does tone things down slightly in later works! Nevertheless, I found this book to be an absolutely gripping read; I was completely bamboozled and had no idea of whodunnit or how! I’m really enjoying encountering Carr’s Bencolin mysteries and I have my fingers crossed that the British Library will release the other titles!