What do you think?
Rate this book
Michael Lord #3
Obelists Fly High
Captain Michael Lord of the New York City Police is the target of desperate shots fired on board a twin-engine plane, where a premeditated murder has already taken place. Will the dashing detective survive the assault? Will anyone emerge alive from the now-plummeting aircraft? And who killed the famous surgeon that the captain was guarding?
- GenresMystery
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1935
About the author
C. Daly King
30 books7 followersCharles Daly King (1895-1963) was an American psychologist. He was educated at Newark Academy, Yale and Columbia University. After Army service in WW1 he trained in psychology and wrote several textbooks. In the 1930s he wrote seven detective novels while working in psychology. His detective, Michael Lord, is attached to the New York police department. Lord's cases are recounted by a Watson figure, Dr L Rees Pons. King coined the word 'Obelists' to describe suspects, and used it in three of his titles. Another series character, Trevis Tarrant, appears in a book of short stories. After Bermuda Burial (1940) King wrote no further fiction.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 13, 2014
Like ice cream on a hot summer day--amazing crime, quadruple-whammy ending, big surprise in the middle, death-defying flight scenes--kind of a tour-de-force for classic mystery fans. Please overlook the poor characterizations and ludicrous (or at least dated) psychology. If you guess it, you are one (or two) up on me. Whee!
P.S. He invented the word "obelist."
P.P.S. And defined it a couple different ways.
P.P.P.S. It has nothing to do with the mystery.
P.S. He invented the word "obelist."
P.P.S. And defined it a couple different ways.
P.P.P.S. It has nothing to do with the mystery.
May 28, 2026
This is between 3 stars (on par for the genre) and 4 stars (thoroughly enjoyable) for me. I almost never rate mysteries 5 stars (would reread) once I know whodunit.
That I was so completely bamboozled (and so was the detective) boosts it up to 4 stars. I enjoyed reading the list of clues I missed and where they are located in the text. The detective was so far afield.
I did not guess whodunit, but I did know Michael Lord's intent with the bulb. I thought I was ingenious for figuring that out, but my husband did also.
As for the rest of the mystery, bah! I was no good as a sleuth.
"Obelist" is a word the author made up, meaning someone with suspicions.
The psychology of this book is much outdated.
I find it frustrating that Michael Lord only wants to find evidence clearing Fonda because she's beautiful. He should show that same diligence if she were ugly or if she were any of the other characters.
The part about vivisection reminds me of Mark Twain's not-at-all-funny book "Dog" on the subject. Quite sad.
Manly Bellows is not intended to be a serious character, but he is only a caricature. He conflates several different topics, and pulls a verse out of context. I am so tired of villainous Christians (I won't say whether or not Bellows is the culprit, only that he is villainous) ... I am so tired of sterotypes of villainous Christians taking the verse out of context, "Vengeance is mine, thus sayeth the Lord."
In context, it means the exact opposite of what these crazed fictional people take it to mean. It is not license to avenge someone on God's behalf. It is a prohibition on doing that because only God has the right to take revenge. Taking matters into our own hands is invading on His turf, so to speak. He neither needs nor wants our help on it. Our taking revenge is daring to oppose God.
SPOILER: So not only did I get the whodunit wrong that Michael Lord ended up with, and whom really thought themselves to be guilty, I also got the real perpetrator wrong, according to the withheld prologue and the list of clues at the end. There are two reasons for this 1) I thought the author was mistaken on some medical information rather than realizing it as a clue, and 2) I thought there was too much distance to consider that person a viable suspect.
Favorite quotes:
"Anger, he knew, to be an inefficient, blundering emotion."
"I've heard it said that science is selective, but that is only true in a passive sense. Actively, science doesn't select, it damns and disregards; it deletes from evidence everything that won't fit its childish theories, and what is left is therefore 'selected.'"
I am not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to science. Peer review really does tend to weed out the bad apples. (Pardon my mixed metaphors.) But sometimes only scientific endeavors involving pet viewpoints are funded, and that can have its own distorted result. It's always worth asking, "Where is the money for this coming from?"
That I was so completely bamboozled (and so was the detective) boosts it up to 4 stars. I enjoyed reading the list of clues I missed and where they are located in the text. The detective was so far afield.
I did not guess whodunit, but I did know Michael Lord's intent with the bulb. I thought I was ingenious for figuring that out, but my husband did also.
As for the rest of the mystery, bah! I was no good as a sleuth.
"Obelist" is a word the author made up, meaning someone with suspicions.
The psychology of this book is much outdated.
I find it frustrating that Michael Lord only wants to find evidence clearing Fonda because she's beautiful. He should show that same diligence if she were ugly or if she were any of the other characters.
The part about vivisection reminds me of Mark Twain's not-at-all-funny book "Dog" on the subject. Quite sad.
Manly Bellows is not intended to be a serious character, but he is only a caricature. He conflates several different topics, and pulls a verse out of context. I am so tired of villainous Christians (I won't say whether or not Bellows is the culprit, only that he is villainous) ... I am so tired of sterotypes of villainous Christians taking the verse out of context, "Vengeance is mine, thus sayeth the Lord."
In context, it means the exact opposite of what these crazed fictional people take it to mean. It is not license to avenge someone on God's behalf. It is a prohibition on doing that because only God has the right to take revenge. Taking matters into our own hands is invading on His turf, so to speak. He neither needs nor wants our help on it. Our taking revenge is daring to oppose God.
SPOILER: So not only did I get the whodunit wrong that Michael Lord ended up with, and whom really thought themselves to be guilty, I also got the real perpetrator wrong, according to the withheld prologue and the list of clues at the end. There are two reasons for this 1) I thought the author was mistaken on some medical information rather than realizing it as a clue, and 2) I thought there was too much distance to consider that person a viable suspect.
Favorite quotes:
"Anger, he knew, to be an inefficient, blundering emotion."
"I've heard it said that science is selective, but that is only true in a passive sense. Actively, science doesn't select, it damns and disregards; it deletes from evidence everything that won't fit its childish theories, and what is left is therefore 'selected.'"
I am not a conspiracy theorist when it comes to science. Peer review really does tend to weed out the bad apples. (Pardon my mixed metaphors.) But sometimes only scientific endeavors involving pet viewpoints are funded, and that can have its own distorted result. It's always worth asking, "Where is the money for this coming from?"
June 7, 2022
Two and a half stars: Originally published in 1935, this golden age mystery is too ponderous to really enjoy. The murder takes place on a transcontinental airline flight (which allows you to learn a bit about that mode of travel in the early 1930's, and is interesting.)
The detective who is on board but manages to allow the victim he is protecting to be killed anyway during a snowy rest stop in Wyoming, begins his investigation by compiling a timetable of where who was when; this section is pretty mind-numbing and certainly we aren't expected to remember everyone's whereabouts. Which means we are given a chart outlining this.
(There is also a diagram of the airplane and its ten passenger seats; but none is labeled since the passengers move about during the flight and change seats at rest stops, so unlike Christie's Death In The Clouds, it doesn't help to see where everyone sat.)
One of the passengers is a psychologist (and helped the detective in former cases) who claims that a man who "does not respond to actively inducive women who captivate him" is already so strongly captivated by someone else, is physically weak or out-of-kilter, is responding moralistically, or is actually responding but not showing it to the public. Seems it doesn't occur to this egghead that a man might not be attracted to women in the first place. (One plot device I find tiresome is having the detective falling in love with one of the suspects, to the point of trying to prove her innocence. But at least this goes to show he is "normal".) This quack also equates incest with homosexuality, which probably reflected the times, but, still. . .
There are also long passages of a philosophical nature (another passenger is a philosopher) that are pretty boring and can be skimmed.
The solution is clever unless you try to remember where each of the 9 passengers was during the 16 minutes the detective charts for us (twice.) The novel is an oddity, but probably could have been trimmed by a hundred pages (with fewer references to who was where when.)
P.S. You won't have much luck finding obelist in a dictionary, but an explanation of it (and more information about the author) can be found in Martin Edwards' excellent blog: http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blo...
The detective who is on board but manages to allow the victim he is protecting to be killed anyway during a snowy rest stop in Wyoming, begins his investigation by compiling a timetable of where who was when; this section is pretty mind-numbing and certainly we aren't expected to remember everyone's whereabouts. Which means we are given a chart outlining this.
(There is also a diagram of the airplane and its ten passenger seats; but none is labeled since the passengers move about during the flight and change seats at rest stops, so unlike Christie's Death In The Clouds, it doesn't help to see where everyone sat.)
One of the passengers is a psychologist (and helped the detective in former cases) who claims that a man who "does not respond to actively inducive women who captivate him" is already so strongly captivated by someone else, is physically weak or out-of-kilter, is responding moralistically, or is actually responding but not showing it to the public. Seems it doesn't occur to this egghead that a man might not be attracted to women in the first place. (One plot device I find tiresome is having the detective falling in love with one of the suspects, to the point of trying to prove her innocence. But at least this goes to show he is "normal".) This quack also equates incest with homosexuality, which probably reflected the times, but, still. . .
There are also long passages of a philosophical nature (another passenger is a philosopher) that are pretty boring and can be skimmed.
The solution is clever unless you try to remember where each of the 9 passengers was during the 16 minutes the detective charts for us (twice.) The novel is an oddity, but probably could have been trimmed by a hundred pages (with fewer references to who was where when.)
P.S. You won't have much luck finding obelist in a dictionary, but an explanation of it (and more information about the author) can be found in Martin Edwards' excellent blog: http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blo...
July 2, 2020
Another great GAD mystery set on a plane, train, or ship. This one gets a little bogged down in the last half as it practically crawls to a stop so the detectives can psychoanalyze the cast (makes no difference to me that the author was a psychologist—it’s tedious.) But overall it’s a pretty good whodunnit, heavy on Holmesian “deduction,” i.e., leaping to conclusions. The reason why you should read it is for the Prologue that comes at the end of the book. And that’s not the only surprise, either.
(Points for the citations at the back, too. This guy was a futurist: he predicts both cancelling (deleting) and receipts! I’m actually looking into some of the author’s pet theories about human behavior. People are, indeed, hypnotized. I think this one was a little ahead of its time.)
Hopefully some publishers decide to put King back in print. I don’t know if I want to blow my whole month’s book budget on another one just yet. I’ll leave you with a very prescient quote, in these days where everyone wants to pretend they love science so long as it’s cherry-picked to conform to their own preconceived notions, politically-correct, social media-compliant, and advertiser-friendly:
“Of course, the vast majority are always hypnotized by some system of primitive beliefs. For a thousand years the Church did it... That’s on the way out now, but the scientific superstition is on the way in. Unless the whole western show goes to pot, we shall have some hundreds of years of as dark taboos and as rigid orthodoxy as priests ever fostered. Priests and scientists are blood brothers underneath, really.”
(Points for the citations at the back, too. This guy was a futurist: he predicts both cancelling (deleting) and receipts! I’m actually looking into some of the author’s pet theories about human behavior. People are, indeed, hypnotized. I think this one was a little ahead of its time.)
Hopefully some publishers decide to put King back in print. I don’t know if I want to blow my whole month’s book budget on another one just yet. I’ll leave you with a very prescient quote, in these days where everyone wants to pretend they love science so long as it’s cherry-picked to conform to their own preconceived notions, politically-correct, social media-compliant, and advertiser-friendly:
“Of course, the vast majority are always hypnotized by some system of primitive beliefs. For a thousand years the Church did it... That’s on the way out now, but the scientific superstition is on the way in. Unless the whole western show goes to pot, we shall have some hundreds of years of as dark taboos and as rigid orthodoxy as priests ever fostered. Priests and scientists are blood brothers underneath, really.”
April 30, 2026
This is the most recent American Mystery Classics reprint. It was originally published in 1935. It is the third "Obelists" novel they have released. "Obelists at Sea" was set on an ocean liner. "Obelists en Route" was set on a transcontinental train. This one is set on a cross-country passenger flight.
King never really clarified what "obelists" meant. At one point he said it meant "a person of little or no value.". At another time he said he said that it meant "a person who harbors suspicions".
Cross country flights in 1935 were very different from today's. The plane had ten passenger seats. The plane stopped and refueled every couple of hours. They would make five or six landing and takeoffs en route. It could take twenty hours.
The plot to this story is silly. The Secretary of State has a rare medical condition. He is in Reno, Nevada. The only surgeon who can operate on this rare condition is his brother Amos Cutter who lives in New York City. As Dr. Cutter gets ready to leave, he receives an anonymous note saying, "You will die April 13th at noon exactly Central Time" That time is while he will be in flight.
This series features NYPD detective Michael Lord and Dr. Rees Pons, a psychiatrist. Lord is assigned to protect Dr. Cutter on his cross-country flight to save his brother. By an amazing coincidence Dr. Pons just happens to also be on the flight.
The plot is as rickety as the plane. There is a magic drug, a trance, convenient fainting, a tedious timeline, and a discussion of the crackpot theories of Charles Fort. We never get a good explanation for why someone sent the note.
This is the weakest of the three Obelists novels.
King never really clarified what "obelists" meant. At one point he said it meant "a person of little or no value.". At another time he said he said that it meant "a person who harbors suspicions".
Cross country flights in 1935 were very different from today's. The plane had ten passenger seats. The plane stopped and refueled every couple of hours. They would make five or six landing and takeoffs en route. It could take twenty hours.
The plot to this story is silly. The Secretary of State has a rare medical condition. He is in Reno, Nevada. The only surgeon who can operate on this rare condition is his brother Amos Cutter who lives in New York City. As Dr. Cutter gets ready to leave, he receives an anonymous note saying, "You will die April 13th at noon exactly Central Time" That time is while he will be in flight.
This series features NYPD detective Michael Lord and Dr. Rees Pons, a psychiatrist. Lord is assigned to protect Dr. Cutter on his cross-country flight to save his brother. By an amazing coincidence Dr. Pons just happens to also be on the flight.
The plot is as rickety as the plane. There is a magic drug, a trance, convenient fainting, a tedious timeline, and a discussion of the crackpot theories of Charles Fort. We never get a good explanation for why someone sent the note.
This is the weakest of the three Obelists novels.
February 24, 2024
✈️ Da NY a Reno
Un po’ incolore. Non si riesce a seguire il ragionamento dall’inizio alla fine e non mi è piaciuto come Lord è disposto a cambiare le carte in tavola per Fonda.
Interessante la scelta di mettere un epilogo all’inizio e un prologo alla fine. Il prologo è il colpo di scena, con tre finali inaspettati. Un’altra chicca è l’elenco delle pagine dove si può ricollegare alibi, movente e quant’altro al sospettato.
Un po’ incolore. Non si riesce a seguire il ragionamento dall’inizio alla fine e non mi è piaciuto come Lord è disposto a cambiare le carte in tavola per Fonda.
Interessante la scelta di mettere un epilogo all’inizio e un prologo alla fine. Il prologo è il colpo di scena, con tre finali inaspettati. Un’altra chicca è l’elenco delle pagine dove si può ricollegare alibi, movente e quant’altro al sospettato.
May 19, 2026
A very tricky story; of course it is set at the beginning of cross country flying so appears very dated. But it is clever and worth a read. The reversal of epilogue and prologue makes for serious reflection...
October 25, 2018
agree w/the reviewer who said s/he enjoyed the look at the experience of flying in the 30's. The story was drawn out and I gave up trying to figure out the timetable. Did very much like the Prologue.
Read
September 3, 2021Not your typical who dunnit. The title gives an indication of how weird it is.
August 18, 2009
When I was younger, I thought mysteries were literarily inferior &, for the most part, didn't read them. Then I read Hammett & Chandler & changed my mind. Ellroy & Highsmith came later. I liked the cover of this bk & had, admittedly slim, hopes that its era of publication, 1935, might be promising. Well.. it's no Hammett but it did turn out to be interesting in ways I didn't expect. For one thing, it's openly atheistic & dismissive of scare-preachers - in fact, the character who's a popular fire-&-brimstone pulpit pounder seems included mostly so the author can ridicule him thru other characters. But, more importantly, there's heavy referencing of Charles Fort's philosophy - esp his bk "Wild Talents"! THIS, I definitely didn't expect! The mystery itself is fine, albeit frustrating at times in the "such-&-such-is-obvious!" & "why-doesn't-he-do-this?" veins. Since the tale takes place mostly on a 'plane {I write it this way b/c that's the way it's written throughout the story - a correct, for its time, abbreviation of "aeroplane" just as "ma'am" wd be a correct abbreviation of "madam" - bringing up a pet subject of mine that I won't go into here], the chapters are broken into sections w/ distance-above-sea-level heading such as "7900 feet". This, in addition to the bk's beginning w/ an Epilogue & penultimately ending w/ a Prologue makes for some formal novelty. Given that the author is also a psychologist, there's a substantial amt of frank psychological analysis that might've been shocking in its day - latent incest & the like. All in all, not bad - despite its pretty conventional sexual mores & rather stupid heterosexuality.
October 20, 2017
G-E-N-I-A-L-E
Un Bassotto assolutamente da non perdere per gli appassionati del giallo ad enigma. E' l'ultimissima pagina che rivela il vero genio di C. Daly King nel costruire una storia, dare indizi, sviare il lettore per poi portarlo dove vuole lui.
Indispensabile leggere il libro senza nemmeno sfogliare le pagine finali!!!
Un Bassotto assolutamente da non perdere per gli appassionati del giallo ad enigma. E' l'ultimissima pagina che rivela il vero genio di C. Daly King nel costruire una storia, dare indizi, sviare il lettore per poi portarlo dove vuole lui.
Indispensabile leggere il libro senza nemmeno sfogliare le pagine finali!!!
June 2, 2008
I liked the look at life in the 1930's but the book was a hard read and the use of 'plane and 'phone were annoying and I still don't know what an obelist is.
May 4, 2013
Charles Daly King was one of the best mystery writers ever.
His novels are all masterpeaces.
Among those, this, Arrogant alibi, and Obelists at sea, are the novels I like more.
His novels are all masterpeaces.
Among those, this, Arrogant alibi, and Obelists at sea, are the novels I like more.
Want to Read
February 4, 2020Synopsis: Police Captain Michael Lord is the target of shots fired on a small plane. PS - do you know what an obelist is?
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews