This was my February pick for my Green Penguin reading challenge and it then became a book group read, so I had the double incentive to get this one off the shelf! I must admit I was feeling some trepidation when embarking on this mystery as my last few Dr Fell reads have not been as good as I was hoping. Moreover, when I have mentioned that I was reading this novel as part of my challenge, opinions on the book were not overwhelmingly positive. Even The Saturday Review of Literature wrote that: ‘Murder and merriment refuse to mix, even in practised hands of Mr Carr’ and their final verdict was a mere question mark. What was I letting myself in for?
Synopsis
‘This adventure of the genial and omniscient Dr Fell takes place aboard the Queen Victoria, most sedate of all Atlantic liners. Before the ship has docked, it has been turned inside out by four allies intent on preventing a diplomatic scandal, and a girl with a Greek profile has been murdered in her cabin. A stolen moving picture film, a stolen emerald, and international jugglery play their parts in this swift and colourful mystery at sea.’
Overall Thoughts
Was this book a 5/5 read for me? No. But… it wasn’t a 1/5 either. In fact, it was surprisingly more enjoyable and fun than I had anticipated. I think there are a few reasons for this, which I will go into, as I discuss different aspects of the novel. So, let’s begin at the start…
Firstly, I liked how the ocean liner is introduced in the opening chapter:
‘No more dignified ship than the Queen Victoria flies the house-flag of any British line. She is what is sometimes described as a “family” boat: which means that no hilarity is permitted in her state-room after 11pm, and all the cross-ocean changes in time are punctiliously observed – so that the bar always closes three-quarters of an hour before you expect it, and makes you swear. Melancholy passengers sit in her glazed writing-room and seem to be composing letters to the relatives of the deceased. In the heavily-ornamented lounge there is soft conversation, not so loud as the creaking of the woodwork when the green swell lifts and glitters past the portholes; and knitting is in progress before some electric lights arranged to represent a fire.’
I found this passage to be quite an evocative vignette and as the reader you are already anticipating the dignity of the ship being disturbed on a lavish scale before the book ends. The greatest loss of dignity is faced by the ship’s captain, Commander Whistle, who ‘will never forget’ the ‘weirdest voyage’ he has ever been on.
However, the narrative soon switches to the home of Dr Fell, which is said to house at least 5000 odd books (living the dream I see). Dr Fell is visited by Henry Morgan, a passenger from the ship who has come to tell his host about his experiences during the voyage, with a view to Dr Fell being able to figure out what has been going on and who is responsible for it. Morgan’s subsequent recital composes the majority of the tale, in the form of an extended flashback, with Dr Fell functioning more as an armchair detective. I am not always a fan of prolonged flashbacks, as they can affect pacing, but I think Carr uses this structural device well and I enjoyed his way of describing situations. For example, Morgan says to Fell: “From the beginning I thought it would be a dull crossing; everybody seemed to be injected with virtue like embalming fluid […]’. In addition, I would say this is a mystery of narrative telling, as the plot is furthered or shaped by the stories characters tell each other, not all of which are true.
In Sherlock Holmes-like fashion, the initial mystery the characters and reader encounter, is the theft of half of a film reel (accidently carried on board the ship by Curtis Warren) which contains sensitive material, showing Curtis’ politically prominent uncle in a compromising situation in which he parodies political speech. Prominent people wanting to avoid scandal and the theft of important documents are both tropes which appear in the Holmes canon and to begin with the hunt for the missing film footage is treated seriously, but also as a fun game. For instance, Henry Morgan, a detective fiction writer, ‘felt a glow of pleasurable excitement. Here was he, an eminent writer of detective stories, involved in one of those complicated spy plots to recover, a stolen document and preserve the honour of a Great Personage. It was the sort of thing that would have been nuts to Mr Oppenhein […]’ Morgan’s presence opens up a vein of metafiction within the narrative, which spreads into the speech of those around him: “I’d thought of that, too, but it won’t work. That’s what always happens in the stories […]”
Curtis, Henry, Margaret Glenn and Captain Valvick devise a plan to catch the thief and retrieve the missing film, and you just know that using the remaining half of film as bait, has disaster written all over it. Something is bound to go wrong, in spite or maybe because of their Bright Young Things energy. However, I like how Carr is still able to surprise the reader within this plot trajectory, so when things do go horribly wrong, the consequences far exceed the predictions of the reader. In a way the trouble these characters are in only snowballs from this moment onwards, as more and more characters and problems merge together. Competing demands and complications brought on by negotiations also feed into the situation. I think the snowball effect is important in maintaining the good pace of the story and a truly tangled web is certainly spun. You can see the characters getting in deeper and deeper, which makes the novel engaging. Interestingly, when it comes to reader sympathy, it is not automatic that you will give it the main body of characters, as I know I felt quite sorry for Commander Whistle, as he does get the brunt of the farce-induced suffering. Yet I would say that Carr sticks on the right side of farce, meaning the humour does not become irritating. In some ways this feels like a plot made for a 1930s comedy film, in particular the bug spray incident.
Although the story commences with theft, a murder is woven into the fabric of the mystery later on, in particular one where the body seems to have vanished (yet there are no missing passengers). This development helps to bulk out the mystery elements of the case.
Todd Downing in his review, sees the plot as an ‘intricate, baffling and subtly worked-out […] comedy of terrors’. He also comments that Dr Fell’s presence in the story is ‘incidental to the fun-making’, but I did not find this to be a deficit because for me the weakest parts of the book were Dr Fell’s scenes, especially the interlude in the middle. Dr Fell is too cryptic and enigmatic, and I don’t feel that the clues he offers, especially the first eight mentioned during the interlude, are ones the reader can really use. Less is more for me when it comes to Dr Fell. During her own review for The Sunday Times, Dorothy L. Sayers described Fell’s sixteen clues as ‘magnificently Chestertonian and incomprehensible’. Furthermore, I think the comedy of errors type plot prevents any focused investigative actions by the characters, making this a hard mystery for the reader to tackle. Interestingly the bulk of Sayers’ review is devoted to her enthusiasm for the ‘hilarious horseplay’ of the narrative, which she ‘laughed uproariously’ at. She summed up that this is ‘a gorgeous book, and if anybody doesn’t like it, I pities ’em.’
Carr beat the Scooby Doo writers by over 30 years, as when the guilty party is unmasked, we do get the line: “I never had such a bad time in my life as when those God-damned kids […] when those God-damned kids tangled it all up…” I wonder which author penned this kind of line first.
Reflecting on the novel as whole I would categorise it more as an epic comedy rather than as a great mystery. Yet if comedic antics are what you are after then I think there is a lot of fun to be had with this story, as I did breeze through this one quickly. I have been watching some of the Pink Panther films recently, which may have helped me to treat this novel in a similar manner. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this story, but it was action packed, flowed well, and for me included less of the aspects that I normally dislike in Carr’s work.
Rating: 4/5