- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Orion; New edition edition (30 May 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0752851365
- ISBN-13: 978-0752851365
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,673,374 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Professor Charles Grimaud was explaining to some friends the natural causes behind an ancient superstition about men leaving their coffins when a stranger entered and challenged Grimaud's scepticism. The stranger asserted that he had risen from his own coffin and that four walls meant nothing to him. He added, 'My brother can do more... he wants your life and will call on you!' The brother came during a snowstorm, walked through the locked front door, shot Grimaud and vanished. The tragedy brought Dr Gideon Fell into the bizarre mystery of a killer who left no footprints.
About the Author
John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1906. It Walks by Night, his first published detective novel, featuring the Frenchman Henri Bencolin, was published in 1930. Apart from Dr Fell, whose first appearance was in Hag's Nook in 1933, Carr's other series detectives (published under the nom de plume of Carter Dickson) were the barrister Sir Henry Merrivale, who debuted in The Plague Court Murders (1934), and Colonel March of the Department of Queer Complaints. Until the end of World War 2 Carr averaged four books a year. He died in 1977.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The greatest ever locked room mystery,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Hollow Man (Crime Masterworks) (Paperback)
John Dickson Carr's many excellent mysteries are hard to find these days, so any reissue is extremely welcome. The Hollow Man is his masterpiece, a brilliant confection of creepy atmosphere, strong characterisation and intricate plotting.One of Carr's strengths was always his ability to imply the supernatural in his baffling 'impossible crimes', and here he is at the peak of his powers. It's a scary, exciting, enormously satisfying puzzle, through which we are guided by the Chestertonian Dr. Fell, one of the more endearing detectives in fiction. Any lover of the Golden Age detective novel who doesn't know Carr (or his pseudonym, Carter Dickson) is missing out on one of the best. Get this book today!
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stunning Locked-Room Mystery,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Hollow Man (Crime Masterworks) (Paperback)
Also published under the title "Three Coffins", JDC's 1935 puzzler is the supreme example of the locked-room mystery.
A stranger calls on Dr Grimaud and announces that his brother will rise from the grave and kill Grimaud. A week later a mysterious figure enters Grimaud's study, shoots him and vanishes. The original stranger is sought, and it is found that he was shot at close range fifteen minutes later - the body lies in the middle of a snow covered street, the smoking gun at hand, but no-one's footprints are found by the body... The solution is terrifically entertaining (and more importantly satisfying), and the novel devilishly plotted. Although the solution may rely on a piece of slightly suspect pyschology, JDC addresses the question and, as he puts it in the extended review of the mechanics of the locked-room story included in the tale, one should never confuse the unlikely with the impossible...
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A bit glib in places, but basically awesome,
By
This review is from: The Hollow Man (Crime Masterworks) (Paperback)
It can be tricky to explain the charms of the Golden Age locked-room mystery to the uninitiated. So many of the trappings of the genre are (let's face it) fairly absurd, and if the reader can't get over that fact, he or she is never really going to feel the magic. Which is a shame, because John Dickson Carr is FOR TEH WIN and Doctor Gideon Fell is a Creation of Genius. In a typical John Dickson Carr novel, a crime gets committed in a totally baffling way, surrounded by circumstances that just don't make sense, and a cerebral detective of some description turns up to puzzle out the logical (if contrived) explanation. The suspects, witnesses and general supporting cast tend to consist of opinionated eccentrics, no-nonsense coppers, and air-headed Wodehousian couples who have trouble understanding that reality won't obey the rules of the detective stories they've read. Although ironically, of course, it will.
John Dickson Carr wrote a large number of these locked-room mystery novels and and novellas, but The Hollow Man, also known as 'The Three Coffins', is widely regarded as his masterpiece. Much of Carr's output was 'variations on a theme'; Hollow Man feels like it's the closest he ever got to a definitive example of the genre. All the trappings are in place, including some fabulous bits of Gothic atmosphere. The backstory to the crimes - the tale of the three coffins - is as delightfully grotesque as anything Carr ever wrote, and at the other end of the scale Doctor Fell's perverse sense of humour is still spot-on. The mystery itself is, naturally, very clever, and although some of the details are bit contrived in the usual Carr way, there are some fantastically logical surprises in store which will really have you smacking yourself on forehead when you realize how obvious they should have been. And yet... at times The Hollow Man almost feels like it's trying to hard to fit in absolutely everything that Carr thinks defines the locked-room mystery. This culminates in an extensive fourth-wall-breaking 'lecture' towards the end of the book, in which the detective Doctor Fell addresses the reader directly and methodically classifies all the clever methods by which Golden Age murderers commit their impossible crimes. It's not even a very rigorous classification - half of Carr's own books don't fit any of the patterns described, although maybe that's the point and Carr is showing off on purpose. Either way, it jars a bit. It seems like Carr probably thought that his readers were already reconciled to a certain amount of ambient absurdity in this sort of mystery, and wouldn't mind another knowing wink. If so, he underestimated my powers of suspension of disbelief, at least, because I didn't find most of The Hollow Man anything less than completely immersive, implausible though it may be. If you've read other Carr, you'll know what to expect and The Hollow Man delivers it in spades. If you haven't read any Carr yet, you'll just have to take my word for it that he's the best kept secret of the Golden Age of Crime. Compared to Dickson Carr, Dorothy Sayers is a total chump. Buy this book or I will never forgive you.
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