The corpse in the waxworks

Rating:
Summary: Lurid, match-lit jewel of a mystery
Review: "The Corpse in the Waxworks (1932)" (alternate English title: "The Waxworks Murder") features the suave, manic-depressive M. Henri Bencolin, 'juge d'instruction' of the Seine, the head of the Parisian police. He is accompanied by his friend, the American Jeff Marle, who narrates and serves as Bencolin's straight man, muscle, and the guy who falls for all of the smouldering, silk-bosomed, possibly murderous mademoiselles. Think of Archie Goodwin knocking off deadly Parisian apaches and rescuing Chanel-clad damsels-in-distress at the instigation of a thin, neurotic, chain-smoking, Mephistophelean Nero Wolfe.

In this case, the body of a pretty young woman is discovered draped across the waxen arms of the Satyr of Seine, in a murky, subterranean museum that very much resembles Madame Tussaud's (which, after all, started out as a waxworks exhibit in the pre-Revolution Palais Royale). Soon it is difficult to tell the real corpses from the glassy-eyed, waxen tableaux such as the aforementioned Satyr, the Spanish Inquisitors and their wracked victims, or Marat lying backwards out of his tin bath, "his jaw fallen, the ribs starting through his bluish skin, a claw hand plucking at the knife in his bloody chest."

The waxworks museum also has a secret passageway that leads M. Bencolin and Jeff to the notorious Silver Key club, whose masked members indulge in midnight orgies of jazz, champagne, and secret assignations.

John Dickson Carr descends from 'atmospheric' to 'lurid' in his Bencolin mysteries, and the midnight streets and night clubs of prewar Paris are a perfect setting for this tawdry, match-lit jewel of a mystery. Let yourself go and prowl with this author through the green-lit grotto of the waxworks, mingle with the masked French aristocrats as they dance to "the fleshy beat of a tango" in the infamous Silver Key club, hide behind the lily-clad coffin of the young murder victim and spy on those who might have killed her. It doesn't get more Jazz-age decadent than "The Corpse in the Waxworks."


Rating:
Summary: Only avg. for Carr
Review: I felt this book was only average for someone of John Dickson Carr's caliber. His usual "locked room" formula was not present here, and the plot was only so so. The best part about The Corpse in the Waxworks was the settings of the Wax Museum, and then the Colored Mask Society. Those were both interesting, and gave an eerie air to the story. Unfortunately, I didn't care anything about the characters or whodunnit. The conclusion rang false to me (especially of Odette) and was confusing. The last 2 pages were fascinating, without giving it away, but I was left wanting a bit more explanation.

It's a good read, but not up to Carr's usual high standards, in works like The Crooked Hinge, The Three Coffins, or The Problem of the Wire Cage.

Rating:
Summary: A Bencolin Mystery
Review: In the eerie green light of a sepulchral old museum of waxworks the French detective Bencolin stumbles across the body of a young girl with a knife in her back placed in the arms of a sinister figure of the Satyr of the Seine. That same morning the body of another young girl had been found stabbed in the back, floating on the Seine river.
Trails lead directly to the infamous Club of the Silver Key: it is known that the propietor's mistress entered the waxworks museum at the time of the murder and was never seen to leave. What connection is there between the musty waxworks and the exotic modern club? What happened to the silver keys belonging to the murdered girls?

The Corpse in the Waxworks is by far the best Bencolin mystery that J.D. Carr has written.

Rating:
Summary: The "Eyes Wide Shut" Novel of 1932
Review: Much of his work is now forgotten, but during his lifetime John Dickson Carr was regarded as among the finest of mystery novelists, a writer who counted both Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers among his many fans. Although he was best known for the series of novels featuring English detective Dr. Gideon Fell, Carr also wrote a half-dozen or so novels set in Paris and featuring M. Bencolin--of which THE CORPSE IN THE WAXWORKS is one.

Carr was particularly noted for the atmosphere with which he endowed his mystery novels, a talent for painting pictures in words that outstripped most of his contemporaries until the advent of Ngaio Marsh. WAXWORKS is no exception: whether it is the strange wax museum, the mysterious "Club of Masks," or the Moulin Rouge, Carr's gift is exceptionally well met here and more than worth the reading.

Unfortunately, the book does not have a plot worth mentioning. When a young woman is found murdered in a wax museum, Bencolin soon discovers that the museum is a front for a fashionable club of the most depraved kind: a place where masked members of high society meet for sex. It is a story in which one thing leads to another with a great deal of high drama but very little logic and rather less probability.

Written in 1932, the entire concept of the novel is unexpected, but--while you can't help wondering if Stanley Kubric didn't happen to read this book before creating EYES WIDE SHUT--what was startling in the thirties doesn't necessarily prove startling today, and without a strong plot backing it the novel proves little more than a one-shot amusement. Worth reading, as most of Carr's works are, but there are many better Carr novels from which to select.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: classic locked-room mystery
Review: One would think that a novel written seventy years ago would have lost much of its luster by now, but this novel holds up remarkably well in a plot that revolves around a dead body found in a wax museum and a secret society of the Paris elite devoted to carnal pleasures. Though some of the elements are dated, this is still a fast-paced and complex mystery by the master of the locked-room crime novel.