JOHN DICKSON CARR

THE BRIDE

OF NEWGATE

Harper & Bros (1950)

First Edition

CONDITION:  BOOK itself is GOOD or better, jacket is poor and ripped apart, but the jacket will be included.  Former owner’s name written on front flyleaf, together with old price mark.

Why would a Lady want to marry a prisoner about to die?

Dick Darwent brooded in a dark cell of Newgate Prison - waiting to be hanged. Lady Caroline Ross, rich, cold and beautiful, prepared a champagne breakfast to celebrate her marriage. How were the fates of these two people intertwined? And how were their lives changed by a shot through a bathroom window, a riot at the opera, a pistol duel at dawn, and a mysterious coachman whose cloak was stained with graveyard mold?

John Dickson Carr, master of the detective novel, is also master of the historical mystery. This is a thrilling novel of London in 1815 and the incredible characters that make up its world of fashion, and its underworld.

Commentaries on line:

…an adventure, historical-fiction with lovely (and some, not-so-lovely) period detail, and mysteries within mysteries like Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels. Instead of a locked room mystery, Carr has treated his readers to a hidden room or missing room mystery. I read it in one day. It’s that exciting.

The wealthy and very cold, arrogant Caroline Ross is forced to get married in order to hold on to a hefty inheritance. But, since she has no desire whatsoever to be saddled with a husband, Caroline chooses to marry a man due to be hanged: mere hours before he will be executed for killing a man (in a duel). Dick Darwent, once a fencing instructor, marries Caroline in exchange for a sum of money.

Only, Dick doesn’t die. And, along with the lawyer, Mr Mulberry, he sets out to find out who had framed him for murder, and why. 

A breathless, swashbuckling historical melodrama, with a fairly perfunctory mystery thrown in for good measure. The heart of the book is its vivid evocation of the swaggering, dandified Regency era – that, and a nigh-operatic romanticism that's all but irresistible.

I've said in the past that I haven't enjoyed Carr's historical novels nearly as much as I have his Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries. And when I first started this one, I was sure that trend was going to continue. But once we got Darwent out of prison and started him off on the hunt for the cloaked coachman, I was hooked. The adventures along the way to the solution are very enjoyable.

This was really good! You feel like you've taken a trip back in time to Regency England! There's plenty of action, suspense, mystery, murder, riots, duels, several brushes with death, some history of the times and a bit of romance thrown in (as well as jealousy, accusations, pride, misunderstandings, and all those things that go with a love story), so there are no dull moments in this book!

This was a great historical mystery. It was a complex mystery. It had a good many twists and was very fast paced.

An interesting concept and a fun way to unravel a mystery.

Once again Carr wrote a compelling, tense historical novel that inspired so many other books. It’s more than worth your time.

Huge fan of Carr, but this is the first historical novel of his that I've read and very good it is too.

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