The Eight of Swords

Mysteries should take advantage of their premise. If the story takes place in a unique setting, then the solution should involve a trick that's only possible in that particular location. If the hook of the crime is a unique or bizarre state of the crime scene, then there should be a compelling reason the crime scene was in that state.

In The Eight of Swords, the culprit leaves an Eight of Swords at the crime scene. Quite easy to understand, no? That tarot card is one of the main draws of the book; after all, it's what the novel is titled after! And yet... there's no compelling reason for that card to be there. Heck, I have absolutely no idea why the culprit left the card there, other than to provide a clue to Dr. Fell to use to deduce their identity.

I think this is one of the main reasons The Eight of Swords fell flat for me. The title got me interested in the mystery of the Eight of Swords, but there was nothing behind the curtain. This feels like an odd misstep for Carr. He's done the "weird crime scene" setup just fine before (such as in The Four False Weapons and The Peacock Feather Murders), so I'm not sure why he had a total miss here. I'm also reminded of Ellery Queen's The Siamese Twin Mystery, as another mystery involving a playing card left at the crime scene, but that book had an actual reason for it!

There are two more reasons that come to mind to explain my lukewarm feelings towards The Eight of Swords.

The first of these is that I never really got into the setting. Typically in murder mysteries the protagonist will be a layperson who happens to chance upon the crime or a police investigator who is specifically called to the crime to solve it as part of their job. Here, some guy is killed in his house, and... Dr. Fell is summoned because he just happens to be around, I guess? Also there's a bishop who's interested in criminology. And a murder mystery author who lives nearby. And there's nothing tying these characters together other than the fact that they're all characters in the book. I never got a sense of who these people were, or why we were paying attention to these people in particular.

Having a bunch of characters all interested in crimes and trying to solve the murder actually was entertaining and gave The Eight of Swords a different feel from the typical Carr. Although the fact that the characters seem to be trying to crack the case solely for the sport of it rather than due to some personal connection or other obligation would probably have made me wonder if the book was meant to be a parody of detective fiction if it had been written by anybody else.

I also want to give a special shout-out to the mystery author character. Although he wasn't as charming as Ariadne Oliver, I still love seeing how mystery novelists represent their profession in their books.

But this ties into the final reason The Eight of Swords was underwhelming: having so many characters trying to solve the murder causes a lot of the solution to be revealed during the investigation. As a result, there isn't much left for the denouement. There are some fun deductions and the solution is wild, but the finale lacks oomph because it's not where most of the deductions actually take place. As a result, even though the mystery plot is pretty fine when viewed as a whole, it's presented in a way that leads to disappointment.

Also the entire thing takes place in basically one day. Another point to distinguish The Eight of Swords from other Carr books, and most other detective novels. Oh, and one reveal I saw coming because Carr had already used it in another one of his books. Tsk, tsk.

The Eight of Swords is not a book I'd recommend, not because it's bad per se, but because I don't see any reason to read it over any other Carr.