The Hollow Man

Very few detective stories baffle me nowadays, but Mr Carr’s always do – Agatha ChristieJohn Dickson Carr was a master of the locked room mystery. In The Hollow Man, one of his earliest novels, written when he was just 29, a murder takes place in circumstances that make it seem impossible for the killer to have escaped undetected. … The sheer ingenuity of the plot is a delight. * DAILY MAIL *Carr’s 1935 locked door mystery still rivals any present day crime novel and its status as a textbook for writers in the genre means it is a necessary read * BIG ISSUE IN THE NORTH *

John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1906. IT WALKS BY NIGHT, his first published detective novel, 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 and Colonel March. Until the end of the Second World War, Carr averaged four books a year. He died in 1977.