In Arthur's book emporium P spotted It walks by night and was immediately drawn. Arthur gave it to him, for the title, the dark green Penguin crime series. One damp afternoon I read it, if reading includes whizzing and forgetting and getting impatient, annoyed at this waste of language.
How schematic the duke, the tennis pro, the lunatic, the gombeen man, the shady woman, the fresh uncomplicating Americans, decoys all, in the sealed room puzzle. How did someone get in and out of the card room, slice the duke's head off with a heavy sword kept sharp for just such an occasion.
I don't see life in terms of puzzles. I'm annoyed that I've been drawn in to this universe where everything is for a purpose. Which is why the god-fearing good citizen can read detective novels with a clear conscience.
It walks by night. It, not He, not She, not They, walks by night. And in Paris. A gambling den. A chinese purveyor of hashish and opium. A chief of police. It is a woman, the duke's wife, with eyes of ambergris, who kills the duke who is not really the duke but her first husband, out of prison and in disguise.
In a detective novel written by a man, J. Dickson Carr, in 1930, it, is likely to be a woman. A man is a man in all his guises, a woman is denatured if she acts. Is that it?
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