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. ( )

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! ( )

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.

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

#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 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. ( )