The most famous of all locked-room mysteries - a classic in the crime genre. 'The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of the prophecy were filled at last...' The murderer of Dr Grimauld walked through a locked door, shot his victim and vanished. He killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at each end, yet nobody saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow. And so it is up to the irrepressible, larger-than-life Dr Gideon Fell to solve this most famous and taxing of locked-room mysteries.

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 ...

Discover the captivating treasures buried in the British Library's archives. Largely inaccessible to the public until now, these enduring crime classics were written in the golden age of detective fiction. With an introduction by Martin Edwards and featuring the Dickson Carr short story "The Shadow of the Goat" 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. Penned during the golden age of mysteries, this thrilling investigation brings a detective face to face with the darkest parts of Paris. And after the thrilling conclusion of the locked room mystery, sit back and enjoy the short story "The Shadow of the Goat", also included in this exclusive British Library crime classic.

Famed crime solver Dr. Gideon Fell attends a housewarming party in the English countryside, but a ghost spoils the fun in Golden Age mystery master John Dickson Carr’s stylish, baffling mystery novel The house is called Longwood, and its history is wet with blood. It is closed up for good in 1920, when a massive chandelier falls, crushing an eighty-year-old butler. Oddly enough, the old chandelier was sturdy, and there was no way it could have fallen unless the butler leapt and swung on it. Was he mad? Suicidal? Or was he being pursued by something from beyond the grave? Seventeen years later, Longwood is purchased by Martin Clarke, a rakish young man with a taste for the supernatural. He invites his friends for a paranormal housewarming, but it is not long before the festivities turn gruesome. Chairs fly, guns fire on their own, and a mysterious fire threatens to engulf the whole mansion in flames. Clarke and his guests came for a ghost hunt—but could it be that the ghost is hunting them? The Man Who Could Not Shudder is the 12th book in the Dr. Gideon Fell Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order. The Man Who Could Not Shudder is the 12th book in the Dr. Gideon Fell Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

"Outside the little French city of Chartres, industrialist Howard Brookes is found dying on the parapet of an old stone tower. Evidence shows that it was impossible for anyone to have entered at the time of the murder ... the mystery remains unsolved for years until a series of coincidences brings things to a head in post-war England, where amateur sleuth Dr. Gideon Fell is on the scene to work out what really happened"--Description from Amazon.com (viewed Dec. 19, 2012).

Hurled back in time, a London police detective struggles to solve a nineteenth-century murder mystery in Golden Age master John Dickson Carr’s thrilling mystery novel A woman is killed in a well-lit corridor, dying before the eyes of three witnesses who, impossibly, detect no foul play. For more than a century, this baffling murder lies cold in the files of Scotland Yard until it is discovered by Detective-Superintendent John Cheviot, who yearns to apply modern scientific policing to the grisly old case. He is about to get his chance. Taking a cab to Scotland Yard, Cheviot steps out in front of Old Scotland Yard and sees a beautiful woman beckoning him. Suddenly it is 1829 and Cheviot is a member of the newly organized London police force. He might now have an opportunity to solve the most puzzling murder in the Yard’s history, but in a time before fingerprints and ballistic analysis, he will find police work to be far more baffling and brutal than he is used to.

John Dickson Carr is known as the master of the “locked-room” mystery—the “impossible crime.” But Carr also wrote short stories, radio plays, essays, introductions, and book reviews. S. T. Joshi has written the first full-length study of Carr’s entire work and pays particular attention to this author’s three best-known detectives: Henri Bencolin, Dr. Gideon Fell, and Sir Henry Merrivale.