My Late Wives

Rating:
Summary: Chilling detective story
Review: Carter Dickson (the pen name of prolific detective story writer John Dickson Carr) came up with one of his best and most chilling tales in this rare venture into the world of the serial killer.

Roger Bewlay is a Bluebeard type who woos and marries timid women and then kills them, yet manages to hide the bodies where the police cannot find them. Having struck 4 times before World War 2, his tracks are obliterated by the chaos of wartime. But then, in gloomy postwar London, the manuscript of a play by an unknown author turns up, a play with some startling insights into Bewlay's methods...

To say more would be telling! Bewlay is one of the writer's most frightening and best-realised characters and the climax, set in a storm-wracked mansion used for wartime training, is a cracker.

Conoisseurs of detective, suspense, even horror fiction should enjoy this atmospheric tale.