King, C Daly - Obelists Fly High

by Mike Grost

Obelists Fly High (1935) is the most admired of King's six published mystery novels. It has a clever impossible crime plot, and surprises in its murder mystery that completely fooled me. So maybe I should be recommending it - or at least its plot. However, the book has some real problems. The storytelling drags interminably, especially in the second half where King explores an all too obvious alibi subplot. The characters are nasty. There is endless propagandizing for King's controversial views on psychology, religion and science. It continues King's vicious stereotyping of minority groups, this time of homosexuals. It is not a pleasant reading experience at all. King has been overpraised by mystery critics. While his works have too much plot creativity to ignore, they have too many other problems to be actually good. One might also point out that Obelists Fly High lacks the fabulous plot complexity of Ellery Queen or John Dickson Carr. Its story could be compressed to novella length without any harm.

Obelists Fly High has some common imagery with other King works. Much of it takes place in an enclosed area, the airplane. This is similar to the penthouse of "Nail", the museum room of "Harp" and the basement room of "Codex". Most of these areas seem to mechanical constructs. They are not the simple rooms of much Golden Age fiction. Instead the story emphasizes their constructed nature, the materials and the properties of the walls, their slightly irregular geometry. These areas tend to be over twice as long as they are wide. They tend to be associated with wealth and property: the 1935 airplane is the domain of the wealthy, as are the museums in the short stories.

The early sections (pp. 33 - 70) of Obelists Fly High depict Newark Airport. This is embedded in a New Jersey landscape similar to "The Headless Horrors". Both landscapes feature, not nature or traditional vistas, but modern highways centered around technological buildings: the gas station of "Horrors" and the hangars of Obelists. The vivid background description of airports and air travel Way Back When is one of the most appealing features of the novel. There was much interest in stories set on planes during this period: see Stuart Palmer's The Puzzle of the Pepper Tree (1933), Philip Wylie's "Death Flies East" (1934) and Agatha Christie's Death in the Air (1935). The vivid illustration that accompanies Wylie's story, showing the interior of the plane's cabin, would make an excellent cover for King's book as well. It helped me visualize the setting of King's novel. The illustration emphasizes that pilots of the era were armed, a fact made much of by King. Ostensibly, this was because they carried mail, and hence were officials of the US Government. But in reality, it seems to be contrived to make them authority figures during flight, and for the sake of image, along with their uniforms.

Obelists Fly High also has the fanatic ideologues of King's short stories. These extremely creepy characters generate horror from their participation in monstrous rituals and activities. But whereas the characters in Mr. Tarrant are members of fringe cults, those in Obelists Fly High are supporters of mainstream American belief systems: scientists. This gives the novel much more topicality and social punch, as well as controversy.