The most famous of all locked-room mysteries - a classic in the crime genre.
If you like the new KNIVES OUT film WAKE UP DEAD MAN you'll love this!

'The sheer ingenuity of the plot is a delight' Daily Mail

'A key influence on WAKE UP DEAD MAN' Radio Times

'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.

John Dickson Carr was a master of the locked room mystery ... 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 *
Very few detective stories baffle me nowadays, but Mr Carr's always do -- Agatha Christie
A key influence on Wake Up Dead Man ... It's renowned for both the ingenuity of its central locked-room mystery - whereby a murderous visitor seemingly disappears into thin air - and a fourth-wall-stretching speech by sleuth Dr Gideon Fell, who lays out the various methods often used by writers to explain such "impossible crimes". * Radio Times *
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 *
The best Carr is the most ingenious, and my vote would go to THE HOLLOW MAN ... The conjuror's illusion here is marvellously clever -- Julian Symons
Probably the most ingenious of all detective story writers in the creation of puzzles -- T J Binyon
No one in the history of the genre could match him for sheer sustained ingenuity when it came to devising reader-bamboozling locked rooms and other impossible crimes * Encylopedia Mysteriosa *
John 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 (1906-1977), 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.