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Review by |
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| Hamish Hamilton, London; 1935
Harper, New York; 1935 |
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295 pages |
January 2007 | ||||||||||
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Death-Watch is one of John Dickson Carr's mystery series with Dr. Gideon Fell as the unofficial but effective sleuth. It's a puzzle sort of detective novel; but the intricacies of the murder problem to be solved swamp any virtues of action, atmosphere, or characterization; and the puzzle itself is too complex. In fact the murderer's plot is as complex as clockwork, but also as delicate as a house of cards: one good sneeze by a participant at the wrong time would blast apart the whole assemblage of evidential springs and motivational screws. Unless you want to draw your own house floor-plan and a Boolean-logic truth table, it is difficult to keep in mind the comings and goings of the characters, including not only who was able to eavesdrop on whom at what time, but even niceties such as who saw moonlight through what passage at what time.
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© 2007 Robert Wilfred Franson |
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