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The Crooked Hinge—John Dickson Carr

May 5, 2005 on 5:45 pm | In 书斋札记 | No Comments

读Ellery Queen的一些mystery，像是在挑战一个个智力游戏，而读Carr的作品，就完全是一种走入迷宫瞎蒙瞎撞最后说不定就转晕的下场。扭曲的门枢也是 继续了这种诡秘的风格。A man named John Farleigh survived in the Titanic disaster, and after twenty-five years came back to London to inherit a large estate. Another man appeared and claimed himself as the real John Farleigh. Just a few minutes before the result of who was the real one, came up, the first man was found with his throat cut in a pool. Several questions left: Was it a murder or a suicide? If not a suicide, who was the murderer? Which of the two was the real John?

With the investigation going further，a seventeen century dummy was discovered, which itself could move without any help, a bulk of books on medieval witch-cult were found in a locked attic. Even more, this book collection seemed in some aspects to have a relationship with the murder of an old lady nearby last summer. All of these facts, together with some psychological analyses on people’s weird behavior, added much more mysterious and horrible atmosphere for the current case. 尤其当读到最后解密那段，似乎刚刚开始被Dr. Fell所描述的一种古老的神秘的中世纪工具所吸引，却发现这只是另外一个陷阱，小说的最后40页并不是全部的谜底，只有最后10几页才是事情的真相。一 切前面设置的神秘面纱都被揭去，留下的是贪婪和复仇的人性。