The Eight of Swords (1934)
Blurb:
My review:
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 (as a teetotaller myself, I cannot understand Carr's insistence on alcohol). 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." 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 Sayers, on the other hand, had been writing rave reviews of his work, and served as his sponsor and patron.