The eight of swords

The essay at the front of this reissue of Carr's 1934 novel says that Carr disliked "mystery stories that tried to be realistic." As the narrative opens, there's no fear of that. It's an English country house murder, with the back of the corpse's head "shot open directly against the bald spot." But then there's the cleric sliding down a banister and a poltergeist whose intentions are unclear. And, none too soon, an appearance by Carr's major detective creation, Dr. Gideon Fell. He's a massive plum pudding of a man, looking and sounding like his model, G. K. Chesterton. He swears by "Archon of Athens," wears a "shovel hat," which is hard to visualize, and says, "tosh, tosh." He solves the murder in entertaining, classical Golden Age deductive manner, yet one has a sense of the hard-boiled, noirish future trying to arrive. The bad guy is a nasty loser hoping to save himself with a king-sized scam. There's a woman with a heart of ice. Sounds more like Jim Thompson than between-the-wars England.

In this entertaining golden age mystery from Carr (1906--1977), his Chestertonian sleuth, Gideon Fell, gets involved in a bizarre murder case after Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Hadley, a close friend, is consulted about the odd behavior of the Bishop of Mappleham. The cleric's sanity is questioned after he's spotted sliding down a bannister while a guest at the Grange, the country home of Colonel Standish, a partner in the firm publishing Hadley's memoirs. The bishop also pulls the hair of one of his host's servants, because he suspects she's wearing a wig to disguise her true identity of Piccadilly Jane, a notorious thief. Things turn more serious after someone connected to the Grange is fatally shot, with a card with "eight swords painted on it" placed near the victim's hand. Wry meta elements enhance the fair-play plot. Toward the end, for example, a character advises Fell to minimize talking about the personalities involved because the "public will only glance at this chapter, to make sure it hasn't been cheated by having evidence withheld." This is another worthy entry in the American Mystery Classics series. (Dec.)