The Eight of Swords

I stopped reading this book after JDC introduced a female character by going into a pages-long digression about how the reader was not to worry, he wasn’t going to introduce one of these pesky modern “independent” heroines; this character would just gaze adoringly at the male character and tell him how great he was :-/ No thank you!

Death by the Tarot
Review of the Penzler Publishers American Mystery Classics eBook (July 17, 2019) of the Harper and Brothers hardcover original (1934).

Dr. Fell was not at all disconcerted. “It would seem that for the moment I am in disgrace,” he wheezed affably. “H’mf. No matter. Sexton Blake* will yet be triumphant.

The Eight of Swords is the third of Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell mysteries. An American ex-pat named Depping is found dead in his English country home, shot with his own gun with the Minor Arcana Tarot card The Eight of Swords in his hand, standing for "condemning justice." Who was the mysterious visitor that Depping had late at night? Why were two shots fired from the gun, but only one bullet found on site? Who ate show more Depping's dinner but didn't touch his favourite soup? What was burned in the fireplace? How and why did the lights in the house go out at a key moment? Those and many other questions come to light before the case is solved.

See image at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Swords08.jpg/300px-Swo...
The Tarot card "The Eight of Swords". Image sourced from Wikipedia.

I thought there was too little of Dr. Gideon Fell in this book. He disappears off the page for extended periods of time and other self-taught "detectives" propose various solutions to the crime. The interlopers are an Anglican bishop and a detective story writer who seek to match wits with Dr. Fell. Then there are 2 romantic subplots introduced as well in order to further muddy the waters. It is all explained by Dr. Fell in the end of course, and you realize the clues were there, but became lost in the confusion. This was yet another impossible to solve mystery, a 10 out of 10 on the Berengaria Ease of Solving© scale.

See book cover at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
The front cover of the original 1934 Harper and Brothers hardcover. Image sourced from Goodreads.

Footnote
Sexton Blake (1893-) was a popular Victorian Era fictional detective, who is perhaps not so well known these days. He was created by author Harry Blyth (1852-1898) and after his death there was a regular continuation series with several other writers.

Trivia and Links
This book is in the Public Domain and there are various online sources where it is available to read such as at archive.org

John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) is one of the 99 authors listed in The Book of Forgotten Authors (2017) by Christopher Fowler. He is No. 20 in the alphabetical listing which you can see towards the bottom of my review here.

This edition of The Eight of Swords is part of the Otto Penzler American Mystery Classics series (2018-ongoing). There is a related Goodreads Listopia here with 57 books listed as of late April 2024. There are currently 72 titles listed at the Mysterious Press online bookshop. The official website for the series at Penzler Publishers seems to show only the most recent and upcoming titles.

John Dickson Carr took the inspiration for Dr. Gideon Fell's appearance from that of author G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), writer of the Father Brown mysteries and other works.
See photograph at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Gilbert_Chesterton.jpg...
Photograph of G.K. Chesterton. Image sourced from Wikipedia.
The source of the name Dr. Fell is apparently from the apocryphal epigram:

I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why – I cannot tell;
But this I know, and know full well,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.

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It took me a while to finish this book, even though the story is well plotted and there's some interesting characters. I found the writing style tedious: it's wordy and even pompous in places, maybe reflecting the time when it was written. Only when the conclusion was nearing did the story come to life for me. After that, the doctor's explanation of "what really happened" was useful in figuring out the mystery.

#3 in the Gideon Fell series finds our hero investigating a few rather bizarre occurrences in the English countryside. These happenings include a poltergeist who throws red ink at a visiting vicar, a bishop who fancies himself as a criminologist out on the roof in the middle of the night, and above all else, a murder. The dead man is one Septimus Debbing, who is found clutching a tarot card, the Eight of Swords. Fell has rivals in his investigation: the above-mentioned bishop, the bishop's son who went away to America to study criminology but spent his time with women instead, and a hack mystery novelist who views himself as an investigator in his own right. Each one has his own theory as to what happened and most of the time Fell is show more kind of off on the sidelines.

As a mystery, it was pretty decent, but you have to wade through a lot of silliness and many farcical scenes to get there. I don't know if a lot of people will have patience enough to deal with this, but if you continue to read, it's a pretty decent murder solution and I was surprised at the final resolution. There are a number of suspects, a number of clues, enough to keep the reader involved.

I'd not recommend this to readers of cozy mysteries -- it's a bit too involved, but if you enjoy these older, Golden-Age mystery classics, you'll be in your element. The silliness of it all tends to bug me -- I like a more serious mystery novel -- but it is worth reading if you are interested in this author's work.

Overall...not bad, not great, but an interesting mystery with a good solution. show less

(#30 in the 2006 book challenge)

I picked this up at a used book store, this is the first Carr I've read. It was more lighthearted than I was expecting. It's a take on the locked room murder. One funny thing is that quite a bit hinges on the tarot card mentioned in the title, and it would seem that at the time, a tarot card was a completely esoteric thing and it had to be explained in excruciating detail.

Grade: B
Recommended: It's a tidy mystery that makes a good vacation read if you already know you enjoy the "nefarious, yet we're having cocktails, goings-on at an English country house in the '30s" genre.

Interesting for its use of a Tarot card lef on the body as a clue.

Mr. Septimus Depping es encontrado muerto en su casa de campo en Gloucestershire, de un tiro efectuado con su propia arma y sosteniendo una carta de la baraja de Tarot, el ocho de espadas, que significa «la justicia que condena». Entre los presentes se encuentran, un obispo anglicano que es un experto en criminología, y ve a criminales buscados en todos los lugares; Henry Morgan, un escritor de novelas de misterio. Mr. Depping resulta haber sido un criminal procedente de Estados Unidos, y Gideon Fell, debe penetrar en los secretos de sus antiguos socios estadounidenses, así como en su actual vida británica de jubilado con el fin de descubrir al asesino.