Halloween approacheth, a season in which it is particularly appropriate to read horror stories. One of the more unusual sub-categories of such tales is the one that melds the supernatural tale with the detective story (e.g., the Dr  Taverner series by the occultist Dion Fortune). The fact that these elements are essentially incompatible make the successful ones rather remarkable.  Perhaps the best one is the 1937 novel The Burning Court, by John Dickson Carr, republished this year by Langtail Press (www.langtailpress.com).

Carr (1906-1977) is one of the giants of the detective story, on a par with Agatha Christie.  He wrote well and specialized in seemingly impossible crimes, like corpses found in locked rooms, and often combined this with an eerie atmosphere.  However, he rarely wrote tales that partook of the supernatural.

I would say The Burning Court is Carr at his best.  There is no impossible murder; instead, the body of a man, possibly murdered, impossibly disappears from its tomb.  Ted Stevens, the central character, whose friend’s uncle is the dead man, winds up being concerned about his French Canadian wife, Marie, who seems to be the descendent of two murderous witches.  The love between Ted and Marie is depicted both convincingly  and interestingly (Carr often did not succeed in this).

Carr sometimes mixed humor with his mysteries, but in this tale the dark, serious atmosphere is unbroken with the exception of one minor, jocular aside, In the amateur sleuth, Gaudan Cross, Carr created one of his most interesting characters.

This is a tale to be savored.