I've been on the look out for a copy of The Hollow Man (or The Three Coffins, to give it its alternative US title) for some time now. I'd heard it described as "the greatest locked room mystery ever" and as I'm a sucker for whodunits I was particularly interested in reading chapter 17, "The Locked Room Lecture" in which Carr's legendary detective hero, Dr. Gideon Fell, lays out his treatise on how to commit an impossible crime... and how to solve the seemingly unsolvable.
The Hollow Man tells of two such murders that take place on the same winter's night in London. In the first, the killer appears to not only disappear from the locked room where his victim dies but also escape the scene of the crime without leaving any footprints in the heavy snow outside. In the second, a man falls dead in the middle of an empty street while witnesses look on - yet his mortal wound shows he was shot at close range by a seemingly invisible killer.
While the police scratch their heads and become embroiled in a years old mystery that might even involve vampires or zombies, Dr. Fell pursues a far more down-to-earth solution. The final revelation is incredible yet cunningly plausible - a combination of fiendish planning and bizarre happenstance that prove Dickson Carr a master of the genre.
Originally published in 1935, The Hollow Man remains a fresh, fascinating and outrageously foxing mystery with a charismatic detective hero at its centre. The book's currently out of print in the UK so I'm glad I finally discovered an affordable copy.
