Love to Hate - The Case of the Constant Suicides

"The price of being a sheep is boredom, the price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care."
- Hugh McLeod



The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941) by John Dickson Carr is a classic whodunnit detective story with all the usual settings and tropes and whatnot. The story takes place during wartime where people have to put light blockers in front of their windows every night to avoid serious consequences.
 The book is bit above average in length but the character writing in the first 3/4 of the story felt very immersive so the pages just fly by.

Dr. Alan Campbell (many doctorates in this story) is about to leave on a train to Scotland and decides to leave his train room for a quick bite at a nearby restaurant after getting his packages in the room. The first chapter. Alan reminisces about his passion - debating and critiquing opinions about historical elements for months on end on newspaper articles. Due to this passion Alan Campbell has a person he really hates more than anyone in the world due to this person talking back to his debates without giving up. The person is known as K. I. Campbell - has a similar last name to Alan's but is only a distant cousin of him. This debating character trait which is brought up multiple times in this story just for characters' personalities' sake, and although this particular part of Alan's and the secondary MC's characters' K. I. Campbell's habits is brought up a bit too much in this story, it was not that hard to read through luckily. Never got stuck to having to force myself to read through the pages.

Alan is a new doctorate in his 35's years of age. He's scottish in family origins but has never been to Scotland personally.

Alan was set on a certain journey which is why a person of his caliber had decided to take a long train trip to nowhere, well, it's also his vacation time as well, He had gotten a letter of invitation from Scotland saying: "Shiran castle, Inveraray, Loch Vyne." Alan's goal is to visit the castle where Angus Campbell had died. A murder? A suicide? That's what's being debated.

As Alan heads back to his carriage room from the restaurant, he sees a beautiful woman who happens to be in her mid 20's in his room which says reserved for Campbell on a small board outside of it. Yes, this woman is Alan's most hated person Dr. K. I. Campbell.

The Case of the Constant Suicides has a very lively cast of characters. Some of the liveliest I've come across in novel format and they would work very well on either comic book or animated format - not so much on live action due to the comical aspect of the story. The dialogue between Kathryn and Alan seems unfitting for realistic people to say.

Kirstie MacTavish, a maid
MC's: Alan Campbell, secondary Kathryn Campbell
Angus Campbell, suicide, accident or murder.
Alistair Duncan, a lawyer
Ms. Elspat Campbell, not really even a Campbell
Charles E. Swan, an unlucky reporter called to Shiran by Elspat
Walter Chapman an insurance man
Dr. Gideon Fell - the detective


Angus Campbell had taken many different life insurances totaling up to 35 000 pounds - despite his old age he had managed to get all of them due to his good health. He took his latest insurance from mr. Chapman's company just three days before his death. However all of the insurances become null if he had done a suicide.

The case of Angus's death is a locked-room case, if it were a murder. The basics are simple:
During the day of the incident mr. Campbell had a serious argument with a man named Alec Forbes who could be a killer. Getting Alec out of the house took effort and Angus went to sleep at 10 pm.
Angus tended to sleep at the top of one of the towers that contain a room. The door to the room was locked from the inside. There are people who absolutely believe it's a murder and people who can see it only as a suicide. Many points of views of different mysteries and facts are neatly laid out by dr. Fell.

Early the next morning Angus's corpse was found, fallen down from the tower - broken spine and many other injuries being the cause of his death. He was not under any drugs or meds so his death being an accident is not likely. What's more is that Angus's death is identical to another Campbell's death from a long time ago.

It's impossible to get into the room of the tower - the room can't be entered through the window 18 meters from the ground level, or the roof which cannot be walked on. Also due to the maid's testament of the evening when Angus went to sleep, there was no one in the room.

What makes the case crazier as well as a possible murder, other than semantics, is the appearance of 1) a mysterious large suitcase-type of thing created of leather and metal; a box for moving dogs around in trains, had appeared under the bed of the late mr. Campbell during the night of the murder. The box was not under the bed the evening before, confirmed by two maids, and the door had to be broken through to get in the day after, and 2) a disappearing notebook where Angus would write every night on as he would burn the notebook at the end of each year.


As the book says it's the case of the constant suicides so more cases are to come but Dr. Fell effectively solves everything quickly, very quickly, along the way.  I can't really say that it's possible for us to come to the logical conclusion of most of these tricks in the book; some of them are simple, some just need knowledge of things. However there are a good amount of small mysteries about how characters act that do make very much sense but never really come to mind. You have to think about the kinds of characters they actually are to come up with the answers, which is nice.
I believe especially that in the third case that a Queen-styled showing (at the beginning of the book) of the room would have been useful. Still, Carr's Case of the Constant suicides happens to be one of the more enjoyable stories I've read due to Carr's ability to write interesting characters who are funny and enjoyable to follow. The end-up with the importance of these characters ended up being lacking as well as the amount of possible culprits felt off but what can you do? Albeit generic in ideas, it's a nice story for what it was.