#197: Spoiler Warning – Coming in April: The Best of Christie vs. The Best of Carr + Your Help Needed

Following the spoiler-filled discussion about John Dickson Carr’s The Ten Teacups last week, I’d like to make a slightly regular feature of that kind of thing because, well, some excellent points were raised and I enjoyed it immensely.  Since my good friend Brad of AhSweetMysteryBlog and I have been throwing about the idea of a Carr vs. Christie post for a while now, that seems like the sensible place to go next.  Not with the intent of picking who is best — that’s Carr, obviously 😉 — but more to compare these two and see where they meet, where they diverge, and what we think can be said about the two finest proponents of the detective novel art.

So, in order to compare these two at their best, we need to identify what their best is.  Thus, by a scientific method too complex and rigorous to go into here, we have compiled a list of the lucky 13 novels widely regarded to be the best of each of them.  In order to help us pick the single novel, you have three votes in each poll for your top Christie and Carr novels.  Brad and I will then go and read these two books — and you are invited, welcomed, and encouraged to do the same — and then throw ideas back and forth and post the resulting thoughts here sometime in April much as Puzzle Doctor and I did before.

One final note: And Then There Were None is excluded not just because it would win outright, but also because it’s not really a novel of detection — there’s no detective, and the solution comes about…well, not by detection, anyway.  Please direct all complaints to that guy over th– oh, he ran away, eh?  Never mind.

Right, to the polls!

Thanks for voting — please spread the word, and results will go up next weekend.