Another title from series favourite John Dickson Carr, writing under pseudonym Carter Dickson, first published in 1934. One of the top novels from one of the top writers of Golden Age mysteries, The White Priory Murders features an impossible puzzle and the Crime Classics series’ first outing for one of Dickson/Carr’s great series detectives, Sir Henry Merrivale. Set at Christmastime, snow is crucial to the impossible crime.

“The ‘impossible situation’ here is the best Mr Dickson has given us”
– Torquemada in The Observer, 1935
“Sir Henry is at his best in this baffling yarn, and so is Carter Dickson.”
– The New York Times, 1934

James Bennett has been invited to stay at White Priory for Christmas among the retinue of the glamorous Hollywood actress Marcia Tait. Her producer, her lover, the playwright for her next hit and her agent are all here, soon to become so many suspects when Tait is found murdered on a cold December morning in the lakeside pavilion. Only the footprints of her discoverer disturb the snow which fell overnight – and which stopped just shortly after Marcia was last seen alive. How did the murderer get in and out of the pavilion without leaving a trace?

When Bennett’s uncle, the cantankerous amateur sleuth Sir Henry Merrivale arrives from London to make sense of this impossible crime, the reader is treated to a feast of the author’s trademark twists, beguiling false answers and one of the most ingenious solutions in the history of the mystery genre.

Carter Dickson was the pseudonym used by the American author John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) for his novels starring Sir Henry Merrivale. Carr was a prolific writer of highly regarded mysteries, many featuring Merrivale or Dr Gideon Fell. He moved to Britain in 1932 and was admitted to the Detection Club in 1936.

Publication date: 10/10/22