Editions

Imprint: BBC Digital Audio
Published: 07/09/2017
ISBN: 9781785298585
Length: 170 Minutes
RRP: £6.00

Dr Gideon Fell: Collected Cases

Classic Radio Crime

John Dickson Carr

Donald Sinden stars as eccentric amateur sleuth Gideon Fell in these two full-cast BBC radio dramatisations of stories by John Dickson Carr.

One of the pre-eminent detectives of crime fiction’s Golden Age, Dr Gideon Fell is stout, jovial and fond of beer and band music. However, he also possesses a razor-sharp mind and extraordinary powers of deduction, which are frequently put to the test as he is called upon to solve seemingly impossible crimes. Created by the master of the locked-room mystery, John Dickson Carr, Dr Fell appeared in 23 novels, several short stories and plays, and numerous radio adaptations. These two dramas, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1997, see him embroiled in two inexplicable cases that have the police baffled.

In The Hollow Man, two murders are committed by someone who appears to be both invisible and lighter than air; while in The House in Gallows Lane, the peaceful English countryside of 1936 is disrupted by an alarming fortune-teller – and a mysterious death. These thrilling dramatisations star Donald Sinden as Gideon Fell with John Hartley as Hadley.

Classic Radio Crime: presenting vintage detectives for your investigation!

Imprint: BBC Digital Audio
Published: 07/09/2017
ISBN: 9781785298585
Length: 170 Minutes
RRP: £6.00

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John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr (November 30, 1906 – February 27, 1977) was an American author of detective stories, who also published using the pseudonyms Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn. Carr is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of so-called "Golden Age" mysteries; complex, plot-driven stories in which the puzzle is paramount. He was influenced in this regard by the works of Gaston Leroux and by the Father Brown stories of G. K. Chesterton. He was a master of so-called locked room mystery, in which a detective solves apparently impossible crimes. The Dr. Fell mystery The Hollow Man (1935), usually considered Carr's masterpiece, was selected during 1981 as the best locked-room mystery of all time by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.[1] He was also an author of historical mystery. A resident of England for a number of years, Carr is often grouped among "British-style" mystery writers. Most (though not all) of his novels had English settings, especially country villages and estates, and English characters. His two best-known fictional detective characters (Dr. Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale) were both English.