fiction.wikisort.org - Character

Henri Bencolin is a fictional detective created by John Dickson Carr. He was Carr's first series detective, appearing in five "locked-room" and "impossible crime" mystery novels in the 1930s, and four short stories that appeared even earlier. In later decades, Carr did not return to the Bencolin character, but instead focused on creating English sleuths.

This article does not cite any sources. (December 2009)

Henry Bencolin
First appearance	The Shadow of the Goat
Last appearance	The Four False Weapons
Created by	John Dickson Carr
In-universe information
Gender	Male
Occupation	Magistrate
Nationality	French

Biography

Bencolin is a juge d'instruction (examining magistrate) in the Paris judicial system, and occasionally takes private cases. During World War I, he served as a French spymaster. Bencolin has a forbidding appearance. The narrator of the stories, American writer Jeff Marle, describes him as looking "Satanic", and characterizes his manner with witnesses and suspects as sometimes very harsh.

List of stories

Short stories

The short stories in which Bencolin appears were all originally published in the Haverfordian:

• "The Shadow of the Goat"
• "The Fourth Suspect"
• "The End of Justice"
• "The Murder In Number Four"

Novels

• It Walks By Night (1930)
• Castle Skull (1931 – not published in the UK until c. 1980)
• The Lost Gallows (1931)
• The Waxworks Murder (1932)
• The Four False Weapons (1937)

Spin-off

Bencolin is mentioned in Carr's book Poison in Jest (1932), but does not appear in it. The novel, however, is narrated by Marle.

На других языках

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- [en] Henri Bencolin

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[fr] Henri Bencolin

Henri Bencolin est l'enquêteur fictif des premiers romans policiers de John Dickson Carr. L'auteur abandonne son héros en 1932, y recourant une dernière fois dans un roman paru en 1938. Juge d'instruction de Paris, Bencolin évoque par son physique et sa morale nul autre que Méphistophélès. Les énigmes policières résolues par Bencolin touchent souvent le fantastique et l'horreur pure. Carr lui préfère bientôt le docteur Gideon Fell, son héros le plus célèbre, qui possède à la fois plus de perspicacité, d'humour et d'humanité.

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