THE DEMON OF DARTMOOR (1993) by Paul Halter

Sometime in the 1930s, Dr Allan Twist and Inspector Archibald Hurst are called in when theatre star Nigel Manson is seemingly pushed off a window ledge to his death, even though he was surrounded by several apparently impartial witnesses none of whom saw anyone do it. This is one of three dozen or so homages by Halter to the Golden Age detective stories of John Dickson Carr, who for me remains the best mystery author there ever was. But how well does Halter’s pastiche measure up? My previous experiences of his work have been a bit mixed …

I offer the following review for Friday’s Forgotten Books meme run by Patti Abbott at her fab Pattinase blog

“We’ve seen the invisible man with our own eyes,” repeated Twist in a deadpan voice.

There are several murders to be solved here, all apparently committed by a killer who is actually invisible! The first took place 50 years ago when a woman was seemingly pushed down a flight of stairs by an unseen hand. Then decades later three young women vanish from the top of “Wish Tor” though only two of the bodies are ever found. Then several years later an actor buys the old house in which the first woman died decades earlier and invites his mistress and her manager (and ex-lover) to join him and his wife there. With such a mix sparks inevitably fly, leading to a death that must be murder, only nobody can understand how. The actor was sitting on a window sill upstairs having his photo taken from below – his wife and his manager can both see him from the lounge, while a local man can see him from the gardens and all agree that he looked as though he were pushed, trying to stop himself from falling, but that there was nobody there behind him. And what about the three women who vanished years before, all of whom were reported to be heading to “Wish Tor” – a place used by trysting lovers – while speaking to a person nobody else could see? Twist and Hurst ask the help of many of the locals, from the gentry to a shepherd, and all prove to have opinions about the evil spirit that dwells in Stapleford.

“Can you imagine what the poor girl’s last thoughts were when two hands propelled her violently into the void?”

While the Carr-like impossible crime aspects are all cleared up very neatly and ingeniously, the real surprise for me was how much this novel reminded me of Agatha Christie, with an identity trick very typical of her work and here handled extremely well. Of the three Halter books I have read so far, this is certainly my favourite. There are probably too many plot strands for comfort and some of the overly melodramatic dialogue that tries to resemble the kind found in Golden Age stories can be somewhat facile at times. But the plot is strong and Halter does create a decent atmosphere of dread. This is one that should appeal to fans of both Christie and Carr – not quite the real thing of course, but pretty close.

“In all my career, I’ve never come across such a mysterious puzzle with such an incredibly simple solution.”

Only appearing in English in 2012, this book was originally published in France in 1993 as Le Diable de Dartmoor. This is one of the steadily growing number of Halter’s books to be translated into English by John Pugmire that are now available either in print editions or e-book format (see the list below). Pugmire deserves great kudos for doing this – yes, there are a few uneasy choices that remind you that this is a translation (referring to the last ever image of Manson as the “ultimate photo” when what Halter means is final, for instance; or “determinant role” when what we need is the word “crucial”) but this is minor nitpicking, it really is. Those marked below with an asterisk are available in English translation. For more info, visit Pugmire’s Locked Room International – www.mylri.com

Dr. Twist and Chief Inspector Hurst novels:

1. La Quatrieme Porte (The Fourth Door, 1987)*
2. La Mort Vous Invite (Death Invites You, 1988)*
3. La Mort Derrière les Rideaux (Death Behind the Curtains, 1989)
4. La Chambre du Fou (The Madman’s Room, 1990) – review
5. La Tete du Tigre (The Tiger’s Head, 1991)*
6. La Septieme Hypothese (The Seventh Hypothesis, 1991) *
7. Le Diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor, 1993)*
8. A 139 Pas de la Mort (139 Steps from Death, 1994)
9. L’Image Trouble (The Picture from the Past, 1995)*
10. La Malediction de Barberousse (The Curse of Barbarossa, 1995)
11. L’Arbre aux Doigts Tordus (The Tree with Twisted Branches, 1996)
12. Le Cri de la Sirene (The Siren’s Shriek, 1998)
13. Meutre dans un Manoir Anglais (Murder in an English Manor, 1998)
14. L’Homme Qui Aimait les Nuages (The Man Who Loved Clouds, 1999)
15. L’Allumette Sanglante (The Bloody Match, 2001) – review
16. Le Toile de Penelope (Penelope’s Web, 2001)
17. Les Larmes de Sibyl (Sibyl’s Tears, 2005)
18. Les Meurtres de la Salamandre (The Salamander Murders, 2009)
19. La Corde d’Argent (The Silver Thread, 2010)
20. Le Voyageur du Passe (The Traveler from the Past, 2012)
21. La Tombe Indienne (The Indian Tomb, 2013)

To look at some alternative expert views on this one, see what Rich Westwood had to say over at his Past Offences blog; TomCat at Beneath the Stains of Time; Pietro de Palma over at Death Can Read; Barry Ergang at Flash Bang Mysteries;

***** (3 fedora tips out of 5)