Book description
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. John Dickson
Carr, the master of the locked-room mystery, was born in Uniontown,
Pennsylvania, the son of a US Congressman. He studied law in Paris
before settling in England where he married an Englishwoman, and he
spent most of his writing career living in Great Britain. Widely
regarded as one of the greatest Golden Age mystery writers, his work
featured apparently impossible crimes often with seemingly supernatural
elements. He modelled his affable and eccentric series detective Gideon
Fell on G. K. Chesterton, and wrote a number of novels and short
stories, including his series featuring Henry Merrivale, under the
pseudonym Carter Dickson. He was one of only two Americans admitted to
the British Detection club, and was highly praised by other mystery
writers. Dorothy L. Sayers said of him that 'he can create atmosphere
with an adjective, alarm with allusion, or delight with a rollicking
absurdity'. In 1950 he was awarded the first of two prestigious Edgar
Awards by the Mystery Writers of America, and was presented with their
Grand Master Award in 1963. He died in Greenville, South Carolina in
1977.
