- By John Dickson Carr, as Carter Dickson
- First published: UK: Heinemann, July 1939; US: Morrow, August 1939
One of the very best Merrivales. Telepathy is neatly combined with pseudo-science, as a sinister mind-reader, with cast-iron alibi, claims to be able to kill with the powers of his mind (“Teleforce”). Naturally enough, this plunges Britain into a panic, a panic fostered by H.M., for subtle purposes of his own. The solution is genuinely surprising, with superb misdirection, every piece fitting together perfectly.
Carr also used the same method in SPOILER “The Empty Flat”, a Colonel March story.
Blurb (US)
From the note-book of Dr. John Sanders, the expert in toxicology and friend of Sir Henry Merrivale:
I think it only fair to add that the presence of the guilty person was necessary to make the murder succeed. The reader is warned.
At 7:15, the mind-reader suggested to Dr. John Sanders that sound-waves can shatter glass, or even kill a man. “The same applies to thought-waves,” he said… At 7:55, their host, Sam Constable, was found dead. Dead from no ascertainable cause, with nothing at all to show how he died…
Can you kill a man by willing his death? And if it were possible so to commit murder, who in this company, shut up at “Fourways” over a week-end, would have wished to kill blustering old Constable?
Here in this mystery we have the irascible Constable; his wife, a famous lady novelist; Dr. Sanders, specialist in forensic medicine; Hilary Keen, with a lovely body and a troubled mind; Lawrence Chase, an amiable young barrister; Herman Pennik, the mind-reader with the mild, apologetic manner. And of course beefy, “Lummy, we’re-in-it-again” Inspector Masters, from Scotland Yard. Another “impossible” Carter Dickson situation, worked out with ingenuity and speed.
Blurb (UK)
A mysterious character who enjoys the power of reading other people’s thoughts causes a great deal of moral havoc in Mr. Carter Dickson’s latest story, introducing the bluff Sir Henry Merrivale, hero of The Ten Tea Cups and The Judas Window.
Host and hostess are alone with a few guests in their Surrey home. The thought-reader warns the host that he will get no dinner. The host indignantly asks why.
“Because I do not think you will be alive then,” is the reply.
And that was only the first murder committed in that house, so Sir Henry Merrivale’s job is not only the usual one of finding the real murderer, but the unusual one of proving that the man who insists he is responsible for the deaths is actually not guilty – not too easy a task with so many queer happenings and so much latent superstition aroused.
Mr. Carter Dickson is, of course, a master of just such a clueless murder hunt, and though in all fairness “the reader is warned” several times against false scents, he will be clever indeed if he finds the solution before “H.M.” divulges it.
Contemporary reviews
Times Literary Supplement (Maurice Percy Ashley, 29th July 1939): GOOD HOLIDAY ENTERTAINMENT
This is the season of the year when families are setting out on their summer holidays undaunted by prospects of crisis or the realities of the British weather. Apart from one’s mackintosh nothing is more useful to pack than an absorbing detective story, and it is therefore a pity that this is also a period when a great deal of inferior work is being published. However, in Mr. Carter Dickson’s new book, The Reader is Warned, there is available one piece of first-class holiday entertainment calculated to distract the attention from Danzig as well as the rain. Once again Sir Henry Merrivale, that highly unorthodox official, is invited by his friend, Chief Inspector Masters, to solve a seemingly impossible murder problem.
‘Masters,’ says Sir Henry, ‘you manage to get tangled up in some of the god-damnedest cases I ever heard tell of… You’d think that sooner or later they’d get tired of thinkin’ up ingenious dirty tricks especially for your benefit, and go off and pester somebody else for a while.’
Fortunately for the connoisseur Mr. Dickson’s ingenuity is apparently inexhaustible and if in this case he sets the ball rolling with one rather remarkable coincidence no one will seriously blame him.
MURDER BY WILL-POWER?
The story begins at an eerie country house party at which the principal guest is an astonishing thought-reader. Not only does he read the thoughts of his fellow guests with embarrassing accuracy but he foretells exactly when his host will be murdered. So it is. That evening, on the stairway, the host has a seizure. No one is near him, and the doctors cannot explain how he died. The thought-reader claims the trick is done by will power and adds insult to injury by later asserting that he has accomplished the death of his hostess, which follows, by “teleforce” when he himself was miles away with a perfect alibi. Is he really the murderer and has he discovered a fool-proof method of killing from a distance? Sir Henry relieves the atmosphere on his arrival by showing himself more concerned at a threat to promote him to the House of Lords than over these seeming perversions of nature. In one or two footnotes the reader is given warning how the crime was not committed. Some readers may guess part of the explanation but few will work out this clever plot in detail. It may, however, be said that one of the footnote warnings might be described by the highly critical as a trifle disingenuous.
The Times (1st August 1939): MURDER PREDICTED
The dropping by Mr. Carter Dickson of his “H.M.” (otherwise Sir Henry Merrivale) would certainly raise a chorus of protest, for here is another portly detective who knows his job and deserves his popularity. Like all this author’s books, The Reader is Warned is deftly constructed, sufficiently plausible, and scrupulously fair with its clues. A mind-reader at a week-end party suggests that his host will die before dinner—and he does. Murder obviously (unless thought can kill), but with no sign of its method. When “teleforce” has a second success there is naturally considerable excitement, but H.M. finds a natural solution to a first-class murder puzzle.
Manchester Guardian (E.R. Punshon, 8th August 1939, 350w): The ending of the book is a little weak with a too garrulous murderer explaining in a monologue, for the benefit of unseen listeners, exactly the how and the why of it all, but in the story as a whole Mr. Dickson displays an imagination as rich and varied as any expressing itself in the fiction of the moment.
Daily Telegraph: Mr. Carter Dickson’s thriller The Reader Is Warned, is one of the most original detective stories we can remember…the author has contrived a story of the greatest ingenuity and intelligence. Here is high-class entertainment indeed.
Books (Will Cuppy, 27th August 1939, 180w): Mr. Dickson’s handling of the psychic material is something to watch—we may not tell you whether or not it’s phony. A don’t-miss item.
New Yorker (2nd September 1939, 60w): Exciting idea spoiled by a pretty silly climax.
Sat R of Lit (2nd September 1939, 40w): Scares wits outen reader with supernatural didoes, and then portly sleuth shows how simply—and unguessably—it’s all done. First class!
NY Times (Kay Irvin, 10th September 1939, 250w): In The Reader is Warned, the brilliant Carter Dickson is at his brilliant best.
The Grandest Game in the World 