John Dickson Carr

We are thrilled to welcome John Dickson Carr into the Crime Classics series with his first novel, a brooding locked room mystery in the gathering dusk of the French capital. In the smoke-wreathed gloom of a Parisian salon, Inspector Bencolin has summoned his allies to discuss a peculiar case. A would-be murderer, imprisoned for his attempt to kill his wife, has escaped and is known to have visited a plastic surgeon. His whereabouts remain a mystery, though with his former wife poised to marry another, Bencolin predicts his return. Sure enough, the Inspector’s worst suspicions are realized when the beheaded body of the new suitor is discovered in a locked room of the salon, with no apparent exit. Bencolin sets off into the Parisian night to unravel the dumbfounding mystery and track down the sadistic killer.

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).

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).

To solve a centuries-old crime, a man makes a deal with the devil: "The fantasy, the murder and the historical action are . . . all wonderful" (San Francisco Chronicle). An aging scholar of Restoration history, Nicholas Fenton has long dreamed of traveling into the past. He has a date in mind--May 10, 1675--as well as a purpose: to solve the murder case of the woman he loves, his rakehell ancestor's lovely wife. Obsessed with delivering her from danger, he turns to an unlikely accomplice: the devil. After striking a bargain with the prince of darkness, Fenton awakens in the seventeenth century in the much-younger body of dashing Sir Nick Fenton. In an era when gentlemen died by the blade, Fenton is handy with a rapier, and his knowledge of local history gives him a leg up on the swashbucklers who would have his hide. But while his sword may help him rescue his beloved, it will take more than that to save his soul. Even in 1675, the devil is in the details.

John Dickson Carr, a master of the Golden Age British-style mystery novel, presents Dr. Gideon Fell's most chilling case, in which a clock-obsessed killer terrorizes London A clockmaker is puzzled by the theft of the hands of a monumental new timepiece he is preparing for a member of the nobility. That night, one of the stolen hands is found buried between a policeman's shoulder blades, stopping his clock for all time. The crime is just peculiar enough to catch the attention of Dr. Gideon Fell, the portly detective whose formidable intellect is the terror of every criminal in London. Working closely with Scotland Yard, he finds that the case turns on the question of why the clock hands were stolen. And learning the answer will put Dr. Fell squarely in the path of a madman with nothing but time on his hands. "There has probably never been, either in real life or in fiction, a more elaborately planned crime than this one." -The New York Times "Very few detective stories baffle me, but Mr. Carr's always do." -Agatha Christie "Mr. Carr can lead us away from the small, artificial world of the ordinary detective plot into the menace of outer darkness. . . . Every sentence gives a thrill of positive pleasure." -Dorothy L. Sayers John Dickson Carr (1906-1977) was one of the most popular authors of Golden Age British-style detective novels. Born in Pennsylvania and the son of a US congressman, Carr graduated from Haverford College in 1929. Soon thereafter, he moved to England where he married an Englishwoman and began his mystery-writing career. In 1948, he returned to the US as an internationally known author. Carr received the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of the few Americans ever admitted into the prestigious, but almost exclusively British, Detection Club.

Matthew Damon was a loving father and a figure of moral rectitude. Why, then, has a rumour of scandal followed him, denying him the knighthood he thought he had earned? Why had he, long ago, repeatedly and alone visited the cells of condemned young women?Behind the discreetly drawn curtains at High Chimneys something sinister lurked. Black-haired Kate and demure Celia were suspect. Brother Victor was distraught. The second Mrs Damon was indiscreet. And murder was done. 'Faultless puzzle in detection' New York Times Book Review

The scene is a fashionable French seaside resort; the witness, Eve Neill, is looking out of her window in the early hours of the morning when she sees the battered body of her prospective father-in-law in the room opposite.By Eve's side is her ex-husband, who has attempted to force his unwelcome attentions on her. How can Eve tell the police what she saw when disclosing whom she was with might jeopardise her own impending marriage?Suspicion falls on casual thieves, on the family and on various acquaintances, but the complicated 'locked-room' case is eventually solved by Dr Dermot Kinross, a detective who becomes emotionally involved ...

One October night in the middle of the twentieth century Detective Inspector John Cheviot got into a taxi, bound for New Scotland Yard. When he stepped out it was from a horse-drawn cab, the year was 1829, and a beautiful woman was beckoning him in front of Old Scotland Yard. There were things Cheviot remembered but couldn't use - like how to analyse fingerprints; and things he didn't know that he could have used - like how advanced his romance with Lady Flora really was. And there wasn't even time to learn, because in the midst of helping Robert Peel establish the respectability and competence of his new police force, Cheviot suddenly finds himself and his lady accused of cruel murder.

Lady Betty Calder is a prostitute and a blackmailer - or is it her sister, Glynis, using her name? Dr David Garth, her fiancé, knows he must find out the truth - especially when he blunders across Glynis' strangled body on Betty's property.The police know she did it, but David knows she didn't, and he must outwit a cunning murderer and a hostile detective-inspector to prove it. What he discovers - about his best friend's wife, his medical assistant, and even his fiancée - make him wish the blackmailing Glynis had never lived. 'John Dickson Carr's flair for the impossible crime shows through at its very best in this historical puzzler' The Times

A chilling Gothic tale of warped passion and bizarre murder by the master of the historical whodunit.Two women: one a vile old bawd, dead, it seemed, of fright; the other, Peg, a headstrong, ravishing young heiress. Their lives are linked by a mysterious portrait and a child's nursery rhyme - a rhyme that spells disgrace and death for the lusty young Peg unless her unwilling lover can trace the connection.'No one is so consistently successful as Carr' New York Times Book Review

Young Roderick Kinsmere was a country bumpkin when he strolled into the Great Court of Charles II's Whitehall Palace. Three days later he had lost his fortune, gained a wife, fought for - and been outwitted by - his king, and no one would ever call Rowdy Kinsmere a bumpkin again. It was 1670 and London was a teeming, filthy, dangerous and splendiferous place. The king was in trouble and Roderick was surrounded by plots and counterplots. And somehow everything centred on the beautiful sapphire ring he had inherited from his father ...'Mr Carr has contrived a fine, adventurous entertainment of politics and piracy, espionage and murder' The Times

It's 1927 and New Orleans-born novelist Jeff Caldwell is called back to that most colourful of American cities by a frantic letter from Dave Hobart, a boyhood friend.Dave owns a fabulous and foreboding 16th-century English manor house moved from England to New Orleans at the whim of his eccentric grandfather. But Delys Hall has been nicknamed Deadly Hall. Some terrible things have happened there - including murder - and there are rumours of hidden treasure and a ghost.'The plot's the thing ... it is a sort of gleeful game' New York Times Book Review

Jim Blake, journalist and successful spy novelist, is sent to New Orleans to do a story on James Claiborne Blake, a congressional hopeful in the 1912 election. But even from New York he senses following eyes. James Blake, it seems, is threatened by sexual indiscretions. And as the plot thickens, both Blakes become involved in politics and intrigue - and then impossible murder - among the atmospheric byways of New Orleans. 'A wonderful period piece that includes some fascinating real-life characters' Saturday Review

Dick Darwent brooded in a dark cell of Newgate Prison - waiting to be hanged. Lady Caroline Ross, rich, cold and beautiful, prepared a champagne breakfast to celebrate her marriage. How were the fates of these two people intertwined? And how were their lives changed by a shot through a bathroom window, a riot at the opera, a pistol duel at dawn, and a mysterious coachman whose cloak was stained with graveyard mold?

The most famous of all locked-room mysteries - a classic in the crime genre.

It is no ordinary murder case that brings the famed French detective Monsieur Bencolin out of retirement, but one that involves a midnight rendezvous on a steamy Paris night, a broken love affair, and four different murder weapons found in the secret villa where the body is discovered.Rose Klonec, whose corpse bears the mark of a particularly horrible wound, had connections - and old lovers - throughout Paris, and soon the number of suspects grows to match the number of possible weapons ...

A thief is loose aboard HMS Queen Victoria, and four amateur detectives are hell-bent on tracking him down. Unprepared for the evidence that their sleuthing activities will uncover - a reel of compromising film, a blood-soaked stateroom bunk, a lethally sharp razor and an emerald elephant - they find themselves sinking deeper into misadventure and pandemonium. But when the boat arrives in Southampton harbour, another passenger, mystery writer Henry Morgan, calls in the famous Dr Gideon Fell - who identifies sixteen clues that lead him to the murderer.

In the shadowy hallway of clockmaker Johannes Carver's house a policeman is found murdered, the arrow-tipped minute hand of an antique clock embedded in his neck.For Dr Gideon Fell this is the only case that has ever really frightened him, and before he can solve it he must find answers to some seemingly impossible questions: why was Calvin Boscombe standing near the corpse with a silencer on his gun? Who locked the attic door? And what has become of the sixteenth-century death-watch?

Christopher Kent, worth a quarter of a million pounds yet without a penny in his pocket, stands hungrily in Piccadilly one snowy morning, looking up at the huge hotel, when a piece of card bearing a number floats down to him. He enters and is served with breakfast, giving the waiter the room number. Then an unlucky chance compels him to go up to room 707. Inside a woman lies murdered in a trunk.Kent needs to prove his innocence fast, and calls in Dr Gideon Fell to investigate - but there's been another murder, and Dr Fell must figure out what connects them in order to find the guilty party.

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.