As our Classic Mysteries podcast this week features impossible crime mysteries, I find it impossible to talk about such books without invoking what I still believe is the finest single example of the genre: John Dickson Carr's "The Three Coffins." I reviewed that book a couple of years ago.
That's the book which includes - as Chapter 17 - "The Locked-Room Lecture," in which our detective, Dr. Gideon Fell, essentially halts the book while he reviews, for the other characters and of course for the reader, all the ways in which so-called "locked room" and "impossible crime" puzzles can be set up and/or solved.
And the puzzles presented to the reader in "The Three Coffins" are given to us with flair - and a challenge. In the opening paragraph of the book, Carr tells the reader exactly what he is about to do:
[T]wo murders were committed, in such fashion that the murderer must not only have been invisible, but lighter than air. According to the evidence, this person killed his first victim and literally disappeared. Again according to the evidence, he killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at either end; yet not a soul saw him, and no footprints appeared in the snow.
If you don't find that an irresistable challenge, let me assure you that Carr's mastery of atmosphere make this book genuinely frightening - yet the solutions, of course, are entirely natural. I re-read this one every couple of years, and I am struck constantly by the book's fairness. The reader is given the clues needed to solve the case - if he or she can pick them out and piece them together.
"The Three Coffins" remains out of print, but Amazon.com has a number of used copies available
. If you prefer, the book is in print in the U. K. and available (under its British title, "The Hollow Man") from Amazon.co.uk. By way of disclosure, I should note that, if you care to buy it, Amazon pays me a few cents on the US links, but not for sales from Britain. And, as always, if there is a mystery bookstore near you, I'm pretty sure the people there can find a copy for you.