Author/Uploaded by C. Daly King
Contents Cover Title Introduction Note Contents Part One: Anonymous: Behaviour Part Two: Dr. Frank B. Hayvier: Conditioning Part Three: Dr. Malcolm Plechs: Inferiorities Part Four: Dr. L. Rees Pons: Dominance Part Five: Professor Knott Coe Mittle: Middle Grounding Part Six: The Criminal: Trial and Error The Clue Finder Di...
Contents Cover Title Introduction Note Contents Part One: Anonymous: Behaviour Part Two: Dr. Frank B. Hayvier: Conditioning Part Three: Dr. Malcolm Plechs: Inferiorities Part Four: Dr. L. Rees Pons: Dominance Part Five: Professor Knott Coe Mittle: Middle Grounding Part Six: The Criminal: Trial and Error The Clue Finder Discussion Questions About the Authors Copyright C I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX 1 3 5 7 9 11 12 13 14 15 16 18 17 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 67 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 113 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 173 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 265 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 359 360 365 364 368 369 370 A D Guide Cover Title OBELISTSAT SEA C. DALYKING Introduction by MARTINEDWARDS AMERICANMYSTERYCLASSICS INTRODUCTION Obelists at Sea is a striking example of American Golden Age detective fiction at its most convoluted and self-confident. This novel launched the brief and remarkable career of Charles Daly King, whose contributions to the crime genre were as outlandish as they were intriguing. The book has an odd literary history which somehow typifies the unorthodox nature of King’s writing. King’s stories exert a special appeal for connoisseurs of the curious, partly because the scarcity of his books has made them highly collectable, but also because at his best he was admirably ingenious and inventive. No author skilled enough to win the praise of such discerning novelists as E.C. Bentley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Boucher, Julian Symons, and (perhaps more surprisingly) Storm Jameson can sensibly be dismissed as a mere eccentric. King’s fiction has a distinctive and sometimes pungent flavor and anyone who enjoys an intricately plotted whodunit may well develop a taste for it. Until the appearance of this edition, however, copies of his debut novel have been vanishingly scarce. King summarizes the key distinguishing feature of the story in a prefatory note: “four psychologists, representing different schools within their science, apply their particular theories toward the solution of the mystery.” The four men are passengers on the S.S. Meganaut, one of the most luxurious of the North Atlantic liners, and are travelling from New York, their ultimate destination a convention in London. Victor Timothy Smith, a millionaire accompanied by his glamorous mistress, is killed after the lights suddenly go out in the Meganaut’s crowded smoking-room. When emergency lighting illuminates the scene, a still smoking revolver falls from the hand of a shady lawyer called de Brasto, Not surprisingly, the lawyer is seized, but it soon becomes evident that the case against him is far from watertight. As complication piles on complication, Captain Horace Mansfield decides that he cannot simply rely on the ship’s detectives to solve such an unconventional puzzle. Desperate for enlightenment and having recently read “a tale of mystery in which a noted psychologist had successfully baffled the more ordinary agents of justice and had produced, at the conclusion, a brilliant train of reasoning through which the villain had been seized,” he consults the psychologists. As in so many Golden Age whodunits, the main characters are listed at the beginning of the book. The four amateur sleuths in the ship’s company are: Dr Frank B. Hayvier, “a popular psychologist”; Dr Malcolm Plechs, “a fashionable psychologist”; Dr Love Rees Pons, “an earnest psychologist”; and Prof. Knott Coe Mittle, “a cautious psychologist.” The jokey names reflect the men’s specialisms and King’s lack of interest in the realistic characterization of his puppets. They also illustrate his satiric approach to crime writing, as do the headings of the sections into which the book is divided. They include “Behaviour,” “Conditioning,” “Inferiorities,” and “Dominance”—only for the final section to be headed: “The Criminal: Trial and Error.” There is fun to be had in the way each of the four men, in turn, approaches the task of explaining the apparently inexplicable, although some of the humor and theorizing is dated, while King’s enthusiasm for psychology causes him to linger over the detail. The most appealing member of the quartet is Pons, whose interests reflects those of his creator. In one
Author: Ruby Dixon; Kerrigan Byrne; Darynda Jones; Jennifer Ashley; Kristan Higgins; Robyn Peterman; Kathy Lyons; Erica Ridley; Rosalind James; Amalie Howard; April White
Year: 2023
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