In general, Carr used Gideon Fell as his detective for novels in conventional English settings but this is set in the United States in northern Virginia. ( )

I have a particular penchant for mysteries set in academia (start with "Gaudy Night", there are many more) so I really should like this transatlantic mystery where a visiting Dr Fell is asked to help solve a murder in a small, select, American college. [Spoiler alert!] However I really dislike this book, not the writing, but the way the men conspire to cover up a murder in the name of "justice" - when really all they are doing is avoiding scandal for their college and passing judgement on female behaviour. This one leaves me with a nasty taste in my mouth. A previous owner has written "Femme Fatale" in the back of my copy, and that's the cliche it sticks with. Fans of Dr Fell should read it but it has dated much more badly than many earlier works in this genre. ( )

I generally like John Dickson Carr. Some of his books are engaging, entertaining, complex puzzles. Some I think have flat characters, implausible improbabilities, and strange interludes. I don't expect every one of his works to be a keeper, but I like them. This one, however, is really insanely bad. The characters are uniformly uninteresting and unlikable, and we are given no reason to care about their plight. Their fears, motivations, and thought processes are illogical ("Only Rose would have done that!" "Why her?" "She's the only one who would!"). They find a woman dead, and all decide that even though they think she has been murdered, they will all not only claim it's suicide, they will actively alter evidence. They show no curiosity about important clues (they never wonder who made a cryptic phone call alerting one of the characters to the crime), but every small incident is melodramatically obsessed over. Major plot points are instigated by chance events (A man is impelled to investigate something because of a dream. A random burglar causes people to make revelations and discoveries). Everything they do is cryptic ("He picked up the phone and made a call. He got the answer he wanted. So he decided he would do the thing he had planned to do.") The historical and cultural backdrop is thinly painted but much mentioned. The end is frustrating in the extreme ***** SPOILER ALERT ********. Everybody /including the police/ decides that the victim deserved to be brutally murdered in her own bedroom because she liked to taunt people with her knowledge of their misdeeds. The murderer, a boring and mousey young woman who has never shown any sign of being a good person at heart, and who has nearly killed several innocent people in her attempt to cover up her own creepy sexual escapades before intentionally stabbing the victim in cold blood, is completely shielded from consequences. When a nasty fellow, for no apparent reason, decides she must be exposed, the 'good' characters try to kill him. Very off-putting. At least it was short! ( )

A woman is found dead in a locked room, the school where it happens is hoping the police will think it's suicide instead of murder, though everyone who discovers the body (and traipses all over the room, and gets called on the phone before the police) thinks it was murder. I guess they thought suicide would be less scandal, or they were afraid of who might have done the murder. Dr. Gideon Fell somehow sets it all straight.

I had to skip to the end of this one. Just couldn't handle reading it any more. Melodramatic, the characters jumping to lame conclusions, time unstable (one moment it's early morning with a mist, the next they are standing in hot sun). Even the end, in my opinion, was lame. Sorry all you fans of JDC, I thought this was terrible. I've never seen so many exclamation marks on a page before. On every page! ( )