The Sleeping Sphinx

This mystery stars John Dickson Carr's gargantuan, shovel-hatted detective, Dr. Gideon Fell and takes place in England right after World War II. Luckily, the good doctor (of philosophy) doesn't come snorting and stomping into the story until the eerie, almost supernatural background is already firmly established. My favorite scene is the Christmas Eve party on the night the victim dies, where all the guests are asked to wear the death masks of murderers..."The host wore the green mask of the executioner. The doors were locked. A bowl of burning alcohol wavered with a bluish flame. Faces moved and dodged in the dark. Suddenly a cold chill swept over the room. A woman screamed..." As always with this author, an uncanny, suffocating atmosphere surrounds the mysterious death of an unfaithful wife. In "The Sleeping Sphinx" (1947), coffins are tossed around in a sealed vault, a man returns from the dead, and the heroine tells a whacking good ghost story that she claims is true (at least in the beginning of the book). Normally I don't care for stories where everyone believes the heroine is crazy, or hysterical, or both. Quite a bit of time in this book is wasted by older men going "now, now" or "there, there sweetheart" to Celia Devereux. The plot device hinges on a diagnosis of 'hysteria' which nowadays would be replaced by 'manic-depressive', since physicians no longer believe that a woman's uterus can break free and float around in her body cavity like the coffins in the vault of Caswall Moat. Major Sir Donald Holden, late (theoretically) of the Fourth Glebeshires returns to England a year after the war. He has been hunting Nazi war criminals under an alias and doesn't realize that his beloved Celia thinks he's dead. When they finally settle matters between themselves in another uncanny scene in a deserted, darkened playground, Don learns that the physician who attended Celia's sister's death believes that Celia has come unstrung (it's that darn ghost story she keeps telling). Gradually we learn the details of Margot's death and her secret life as a fortune teller. Don and Dr. Fell exchange cryptic two-word notes in an effort to keep the reader from knowing what they know about the murder (I hate this device). Dr. Fell drops his usual misleading trail of coy hints and half-sentences (he is always getting interrupted before he says anything important). The ending is slightly disappointing, although I never did guess the identity of the murderer. All of the female characters are a bit off-key: lying, having hysterics, or begging their boyfriends to beat them. Nevertheless, John Dickson Carr is "the Grand Master of Mystery" from England's Golden Age of Mystery (okay, he's actually an American but he lived in England), and once the reader is inured to Dr. Fell's annoying snorts and hints, "The Sleeping Sphinx" is a whopping good read.

If you only read on mystery novel by the master John Dickson Carr, then read this moody mystery with a Gothic feel. Leave the lights on at night! John Green Page, A