Castle Skull, first published in 1931, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr was an American author of detective stories, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn....

 which features Carr's series detective Henri Bencolin

Henri Bencolin

Henri Bencolin is a fictional detective created by John Dickson Carr. He is Carr's first series detective, appearing in five "locked-room" and "impossible crime" mystery novels of the 1930s, and four short stories from an even earlier date...

. This novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 is a mystery of the type known as a whodunnit.

Plot summary

Maleger is a stage magician whose feats of magic are so mysterious and hideous, and his stage presence so evil, that his act frightens unwary children and many adults. In 1912, he purchases the famous Schloss Schadel -- Castle Skull, on the banks of the Rhine, and transforms the ruin into a nightmare that is appropriate for its terrifying history (including scenes of torture, insanity and suicide). Twenty years later, one of Maleger's few friends is seen running about the battlements of Castle Skull—he has been shot three times in the chest, but was still alive when the murderer poured kerosene on him and ignited it. Maleger was traveling alone on the train to his castle; several days later, his body was fished out of the Rhine. Maleger's friend Jérôme D'Aunay, a Belgian financier, hires Parisian detective Henri Bencolin and his associate Jeff Marle to investigate these deaths and the strange goings-on at a house party staying at a villa across the river from Castle Skull.