It Walks By Night (1930)

It Walks By Night, first published in 1930, is the first detective novel by John Dickson Carr. It introduced Carr's series detective Henri Bencolin. This novel is a mystery of the type known as a locked-room mystery. It has been compared to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe.

Synopsis

A closely guarded room in a Paris gambling house, a mangled body on the floor, a severed head staring from the centre of the carpet; someone had entered that room, killed and escaped all within ten minutes.

Ten minutes after the Duc de Saligny entered the card room, the police burst in – and found he had been murdered. Both doors to the card room had been watched yet the murderer had gone in and out without being seen by anyone.

Reception

In a 2019 review in the Times Literary Supplement, Heather O'Donoghue writes that while the setting is "unexpectedly hard-hitting", "the novel itself is not easy reading" and that character development suffers, in part due to the tradition that "the culprit should be the least likely suspect".