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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A lurid tale of witchcraft,
By E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Below Suspicion: a Dr. Gideon Fell Mystery (Paperback)
Fat Dr. Fell is in fine fettle during his mercifully brief appearances in "Below Suspicion (1949)," a mystery set in London a couple of years after the end of WWII. Much of the action centers around Mr. Patrick Butler, K.C., an Irish barrister also known as 'The Great Defender." He has made his reputation by defending notorious women in Old Bailey and always getting them off. He doesn't care whether his clients are guilty or innocent. In fact, he prefers the guilty ones as they are more of a challenge.Butler was a man I loved to hate, at least in the beginning. He offers up the opinion that the way women can be kept happy in prison is by giving them a mirror, a comb, and some make-up. He tells several of the other characters that he is never wrong. He shouts at one judge, "How do you like that, you old swine?" Actually, that was when I began to feel a certain fondness toward Butler. The judge really was an old swine. Butler blithely blunders about grim, post-war London finally getting his comeuppance from a pair of unlikely characters: a newly widowed ditzy blonde who is accused of poisoning her husband; and a small-time hood whose nickname is 'Gold-teeth.' Carr certainly works hard at building up a sinister atmosphere around a mysterious cult that worships Satan and poisons people for fun and profit. However, some of his gimmicks may seem quaint and rather tame to the modern reader: the women who worship Satan wear red garters! Marijuana-scented candles are used during the hideous ceremony of the Black Mass! Innocent young maids are lured into serving as the altar during said hideous ceremony! (Afterwards they are given two free passes to a future mass, and a tastefully matched set of black candles--many clues revolve around Dr. Fell scrapping black wax off of the most innocent-appearing householder's candelabras). The gangsters aren't really part of the plot, but serve as props upon which our hero, Butler bloodies his knuckles a few times. One of my favorite scenes involves a ruckus where he heaves billiard balls at various menacing figures armed with brass knuckles and razor-studded potatoes. The denouement, when Butler unmasks the evil cult leader might elicit guffaws rather than gasps of astonishment, but if you have a surreptitious fondness for lurid mid-twentieth-century detective novels, I think you'll enjoy "Below Suspicion."
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