David H.'s Reviews > Obelists at Sea

This was an interesting "Golden Age mystery" that got bogged down in far too much psychology and misdirection. King has an interesting conceit here of using four psychologists of different interests and disciplines aboard a ship to London to attempt to help solve the crime. Except... they don't do a whole lot in the end and only incidentally. The modern introduction speaks of the author commenting satirically on mysteries, but I have to admit I didn't really catch much of the satire. Also, even for a book from 1932, this had a surprising amount of antisemitism and sexism. (Using a Jewish character's desire to keep kosher in his eating habits against him is pretty low.) The book did have a "clue finder" at the end which pointed to all of the clues the author left to the true killer, which is pretty neat.