Book description
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, 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.
