Obelists at Sea (#Mystery)

 "An obelist is one who harbours suspicions."

Or so says C. Daly King. It's a word of his own invention.

In 1932 the S. S. Meganaut is on the run between New York and France. In the evening in the ship's smoking room, the lights fail for a moment, there's the sound of a shot, and when the lights come back up Mr. Smith, American millionaire, is dead, shot, and Mr. de Brasto, shady lawyer, is holding a smoking gun. Open and shut case, right?

Ha!

And that's despite the fact that Smith had just been persecuting de Brasto over an innocent shipboard game. The Meganaut (think the Queen Mary, which carried 2100 passengers and 1100 crew) has two detectives aboard, but they were prepared for the occasional brawl or sneak thief, not for an actually mysterious murder. 

But there's also four psychologists aboard on their way to a European conference, and the captain quickly turns to them for assistance. They each produce a suspect in accordance with their psychological theories: a behaviourist, a Freudian of sorts, an early proponent of a lie detector device, etc. All their suspects prove to be red herrings. 

So who does solve it? (Because it does get solved.) Well, that's part of the mystery, too...

It's a pretty good Golden Age mystery, it moves along well, and prides itself on its fair-play cluing; the last section is 'The Clue Finder'--"Do not open until you have finished the story." I have to admit to not seeing enough of those clues to know who the killer was.

C. Daly King was an American psychologist, who wrote a text book with the Marstons (they of Wonder Woman fame). His attitude towards the four psychologists is curious: he allows them space to be serious, but still is a bit mocking of their various theories. And he gives them silly names: the behaviourist is Frank B. Hayvier, for example. The last psychologist is perhaps the most respected; he considers all the theories useful, but none of them complete. His name is Professor Knott Coe Mittle. (Ha, ha.) But even he fails to produce the killer. I will admit to finding the names a bit of a distraction.

This is the first of the Obelist series, and King went on to write several more, plus he started another series later. They've been out of print for years, until Otto Penzler Classics brought this one out again earlier this year, with an introduction by Martin Edwards. Michael Dirda's review in The Washington Post (where I first saw it mentioned) suggests one of the later Obelist ones is even better, so hopefully they don't stop with just the first.

For the Vintage Mystery challenge.

Vintage Mystery, Gold, Boat: I'd call that a ship myself, but shhh. I was once told you can put a boat on a ship, but you can't put a ship on a boat, and that was the difference, but we'll just ignore that for now...