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Title: Classic mystery
Review: Another fine mystery from John Dickson Carr! This one starts out slow but has a bang-up conclusion. As sometimes happens in his novels, the great detective (in this case the brilliant Dr. Gideon Fell) hardly appears at all. Unlike Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, the personality of the detective hardly comes into play at all! This is somewhat unfortunate. The detective, in Carr's mysteries, is more a device than a character.As in some of his other books, Carr (aka Carter Dickson) in this book portrays a group of young, prankish, aristocratic Brits. These characters can be quite insufferable. Unlike P.G. Wodehouse (surely an influence on Carr), the author does not seem to recognize how annoying these upper-class twits can be! But in Carr mysteries the puzzle is all, and few authors have constructed more entertainingly and elaborately misleading traps.
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