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A review by halibut
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
3.0
I liked the mystery, a twisty enough locked room story. But I found the style pretty frustrating.
It's extremely reliant on dialogue, There were points where the dialogue felt absurd, that it was filling the role that would be better performed by straightforward narration: at one point that the police detective Hadley is told "that's the bathroom" as he is entering, as though the detective would walk in and be confounded by what this odd porcelain chair and man-sized trough could possibly mean. The narrative needs to say this is a bathroom, so we know, but it sounded very strange spoken by one of the characters. Outside dialogue, some seemingly simple observations or descriptions get assigned apparently arbitrarily as characters thoughts, though I never found this gave us any particular insight into the character that they specifically were thinking these things, the style just has a reliance on reported though or speech.
The repetition of descriptions, particularly for Dr Fell (lumbering, growling) became grating quickly as well. Why is he always growling? In general everyone seems to constantly furious at each other through most of the book.
Fell seems intended to be a pretty annoying character, constantly announcing he has solved things, but showing no inclination to tell anyone the solution or how, and there are points where the expressed frustration of Hadley was funny and cathartic for the reader. It is extremely funny to put in a chapter lecturing your readers, in advance of the conclusion, about how if they're unhappy with the resolution of the story they are not only wrong, but unreasonable. That was probably my favourite chapter.
It's extremely reliant on dialogue, There were points where the dialogue felt absurd, that it was filling the role that would be better performed by straightforward narration: at one point that the police detective Hadley is told "that's the bathroom" as he is entering, as though the detective would walk in and be confounded by what this odd porcelain chair and man-sized trough could possibly mean. The narrative needs to say this is a bathroom, so we know, but it sounded very strange spoken by one of the characters. Outside dialogue, some seemingly simple observations or descriptions get assigned apparently arbitrarily as characters thoughts, though I never found this gave us any particular insight into the character that they specifically were thinking these things, the style just has a reliance on reported though or speech.
The repetition of descriptions, particularly for Dr Fell (lumbering, growling) became grating quickly as well. Why is he always growling? In general everyone seems to constantly furious at each other through most of the book.
Fell seems intended to be a pretty annoying character, constantly announcing he has solved things, but showing no inclination to tell anyone the solution or how, and there are points where the expressed frustration of Hadley was funny and cathartic for the reader. It is extremely funny to put in a chapter lecturing your readers, in advance of the conclusion, about how if they're unhappy with the resolution of the story they are not only wrong, but unreasonable. That was probably my favourite chapter.