John Dickson Carr

Having lost all his money in hare-brained get-rich-quick schemes, old Angus Campbell has nothing to leave his heirs but the proceeds of his life insurance policies. After he falls to his death from a locked bedchamber in the tower of Shira Castle in the Scottish Highlands, his family gather. They are joined by amateur sleuth Dr Gideon Fell, who tries to solve the mystery. Is it suicide, or is it murder? From Shira to Glencoe Gideon Fell trains his forensic intelligence on trying to discover the truth behind events. In the meantime a tabloid press reporter endlessly falls foul of the redoubtable lady of the house, two young people fall in love while arguing incessantly, and a cast of locals come and go as if this is all a normal days occurrence. And all the while bodies continue to pile up . . . The Case of the Constant Suicides is a masterfully plotted locked-room mystery from the master of the art.

The most famous of all locked-room mysteries - a classic in the crime genre. 'The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of the prophecy were filled at last...' The murderer of Dr Grimauld walked through a locked door, shot his victim and vanished. He killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at each end, yet nobody saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow. And so it is up to the irrepressible, larger-than-life Dr Gideon Fell to solve this most famous and taxing of locked-room mysteries.

Three guests at Martin Clarke's weekend party swore they saw the pistol lifted from the wall, levelled and shot. Yet no hand held it. It couldn't have happened ... but there was a dead body on the floor to prove that it had. For the victim, it was far too late for a doctor. To unmask the clever murderer, however, a house visit by Dr Gideon Fell is just what the doctor ordered. But the killer still somehow avoids taking his medicine - until Fell vows to prescribe his own remedy for bringing the murderer to justice.

John Dickson Carr is known as the master of the “locked-room” mystery—the “impossible crime.” But Carr also wrote short stories, radio plays, essays, introductions, and book reviews. S. T. Joshi has written the first full-length study of Carr’s entire work and pays particular attention to this author’s three best-known detectives: Henri Bencolin, Dr. Gideon Fell, and Sir Henry Merrivale.

An inheritance hangs in the balance in a case of stolen identities, imposters, and murder Banished from the idyllic English countryside he once called home and en route to live with his cousin in America, Sir John Farnleigh, black sheep of the wealthy Farnleigh clan, nearly perished in the sinking of the Titanic. Though he survived the catastrophe, his ties with his family did not, and he never returned to England—not even for the funerals of his mother, his father, or, most recently, his older brother Dudley. Now, nearly 25 years since he was first sent away, Sir John has finally returned home to claim his inheritance. But another “Sir John” soon follows, an unexpected man who insists he has absolute proof of his identity and of his claim to the estate. Before the case can be settled, however, one of the two men is murdered, and Dr. Gideon Fell, who happens to be passing through the village, finds himself facing one of the most challenging cases of his career. To solve it, he’ll have to confront a series of bizarre and chilling phenomena, diving deep into the realm of the occult and brushing up against witchcraft, magic, and a sinister automaton to explain a seemingly impossible crime. Selected by a panel of twelve mystery luminaries as one of the ten best locked-room mysteries of all time, The Crooked Hinge is a creepy and atmospheric puzzle inspired by a real life case. It is the ninth installment in the Dr. Gideon Fell series, which may be read in any order.

A murdered man in a top hat leads Dr. Gideon Fell to a killer with a sick sense of humor At the hand of an outrageous prankster, top hats are going missing all over London, snatched from the heads of some of the city’s most powerful people—but is the hat thief the same as the person responsible for stealing a lost story by Edgar Allan Poe, the manuscript of which has just disappeared from the collection of Sir William Bitton? Unlike the manuscript, the hats don’t stay stolen for long, each one reappearing in unexpected and conspicuous places shortly after being taken: on the top of a Trafalgar Square statue, hanging from a Scotland Yard lamppost, and now, in the foggy depths of the Tower of London, on the head of a corpse with a crossbow bolt through the heart. Amateur detective and lexicographer Dr. Gideon Fell is on the case, and when the dead man is identified as the nephew of the collector, he discovers that the connections underlying the bizarre and puzzling crimes may be more intimate than initially expected. Reprinted for the first time in thirty years, the second novel in the Dr. Gideon Fell series, which need not be read in any order, finds the iconic character investigating one of the most extraordinary murders of his career. A baffling whodunnit with menace at every turn, The Mad Hatter Mystery proves that Carr is the “unexcelled master of creepy erudition, swift-moving excitement and suspense through atmosphere” (New York Times).

A classic tale combining hints of the supernatural and an 'impossible' murder. The death of Miles Despard looks simple enough. But then how does the housekeeper see a woman walk through a wall? And how would someone walk through a door that had been bricked up two hundred years ago? To all intents and purposes, it looks as if someone has come from the past to commit the murder, but could that really be the case? Surely not...