Review by Nick Fuller
3/5
Hugh Donovan had an uneasy feeling that nonsense was beginning to assume the colours of ugly purpose.
This is one of Carr's lesser books, and a disappointment after the two previous Fells. It is standard period stuff — i.e., English country-house with American gangsters running around the place, and everyone ranting and raving about drink. Dr. Fell does little, except compete against a methodical criminologist, who recognises the error of his ways. This character, the Bishop of Mappleham, is a good portrayal of obsession. There are no red herrings, and the murderer's identity is surprising only because of the Murder on the Links gambit: present your murderer in at most two chapters. This solution, a variation of which formed the solution of the final Dr. Fell novel, Dark of the Moon (1967), seems to be the next logical step in the Bencolin saga.
The book is, surprisingly for Carr, stylishly poor, and told in a most irritating vein. Carr uses an interesting, though ultimately self-defeating, approach: the reader is unsure whether he is reading a comedy (the infamous Dr. Sigismund von Hornswoggle scene, Bishops sliding down bannisters, and mysterious poltergeists) or an atmospheric thriller (the final three chapters, containing the last two murders, are very tense).
On an incidental note, there is a satire of critics. To write a story that the critics will enjoy, there "has to be no action, no atmosphere whatever (that's very important), as few interesting characters as possible, absolutely no digressions, and above all things, no deduction." In other words, you have to be [Crofts, Freeman Wills|Freeman Wills Crofts. Carr was obviously fairly annoyed about the reviews he had been receiving in the paper — The Times Literary Supplement dismissed The Mad Hatter Mystery and The Eight of Swords (see below) as being poor stories. Dorothy L Sayers, on the other hand, had been writing rave reviews of his work, and served as his sponsor and patron.
Comments (1)
Jon said
at 12:16 pm on Dec 4, 2011
"THE EIGHT OF SWORDS
This book contains four violent deaths. One is a mystery. The others come more or less in the way of business. Poetic justice is vindicated all round. For all the villains die unpleasantly. There is a fine scene of a midnight tracking, which, while it lasts, holds the attention. There are also a comic bishop, a comic chief constable, who is in addition both a rich country gentleman and a publisher, a comic, but omniscient, amateur detective amateur detective and a comic inspector of police, who talks in an unidentifiable dialect, as well as a number of minor characters, introduced, apparently, for the purpose of confusing the issue. The result is to produce in the reader a sense of bewilderment. The motive for the chief murder is plain when you are told what it is, though no one could guess it beforehand. But there seems to be no motive for any other action in the book. Mr. Carr has a theory how a detective novel should be written; so these things are not accidental. Unfortunately he also has a theory that humour is engendered by the simple process of allowing his characters to be very rude to one another." -- TLS
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