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JUST_MEN
January 15, 2007
Additions: June 10, 2008
The hero of most of
John Dickson Carr's
mystery novels was SUSPECT_BELOW
"Gideon Fell" --
a man with the appearence
of G.K. Chesterton, but
with a name that suggests
a "fallen angel".
Where Chesterton and his "Father Brown"
were absolutists where honesty is Consider "The Secret
concerned, Gideon Fell is shown Garden", where the
early on to be pondering the prospective victims of
question "What *is* justice?", and theft are intentionally
throughout the series Fell has depicted so as to
clearly concluded it has nothing provoke the least
to do with the letter of any law -- possible sympathy from
he repeatedly engineers events so the reader.
that the murderer goes free, if that
seems like the most reasonable Even here there is supposed
outcome. to be something horrible
about theft, because "Thou
shalt not steal".
Further, John Dickson Carr does
not seem to be a fan of the
idea of a government of laws...
In "The Dead Man's Knock" (1958),
his Gideon Fell complains about the
rigidity of British law, and comments
approvingly on some Virigina cops who "We believe in justice."
are prepared to let a murderer go, -- p. 162
because the victim probably deserved
it anyway.
Writing under the name of Carter Dickson,
in "The Cavalier's Cup" (1953), there
are sour comments on the Labor government
"giving away" the British empire. (Others might think of
this as "giving back")
And much is made of the sheer
romance of tales of loyal royalists
fighting a hopeless battle against
Cromwell's roundheads.
Carr likes the idea of kings and empire
because he likes the stories about them? Asimov
argued with
An example of narrative people who
warping one's sense of express
morality? a preference
for the
ancient
world.
UGLYBEAUTY
He would ask
"how would you
like being a
slave?"
Since romantic
Joshi observes that stories require
early in Carr's career individuals
religious figures are with some
often targets of attack. control over
their fate,
But Joshi does not quite they tend to
connect the dots: focus on people
with that
Carr was an anarchic control.
hedonist, ala Thorne
Smith, for whom all They make it
symbols of authority easy to
('stuffed shirts') were forget that
fair game. many people
had none.
Carr, like Chesterton, wrote
odes to "common sense", NARRATIVE_DRIVE
but it was the common sense
of the tippler, with a distrust
for abstractions and a focus GALE_OF_THE_WORLD
on the personal.
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