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The Lost Gallows

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About this listen

As the thick, autumnal fog chokes the capital, within the fire-lit lounge of London's notorious Brimstone Club a bizarre tale is being spun for Inspector Bencolin and his friend Jeff Marle. A member of the club has been sent a model of a tiny gallows, and the word is that the folkloric hangman Jack Ketch has been stalking the streets for victims by night.

The threat of this supposed bogeyman becomes thrillingly real when that same night Bencolin and Marle are almost run down by a limousine with a corpse behind the wheel. When an ominous message claims the car's passenger has been taken to the gallows at Ruination Street for hanging, the detective and his associate venture into the night to discover the truth behind the terrifying Ketch and a street which cannot be found on any map.

©1931, 2020 The Estate of Clarice M. Carr, Martin Edwards (P)2022 Soundings Detective Mystery Suspense Thriller & Suspense Traditional Detectives Fiction Exciting Scary
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Underrated early work by Dickson Carr whom JB Priestly rightly perceived as standing out for his mastery of the macabre. Some v haunting imagery within the plot; closer to grand guignol than the rest of JDC's oeuvre.
I wish that readers could visualise Bencolin as speaking without a trace of a French accent; then we could go without the faux Gallic accents. I hereby declare AN amnesty on speaking English with supposed foreign accents.
Worth hearing if you enjoy detective stories of the early 1930s & JDC's work.

One of the best of JDC's early works

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