John Dickson Carr  

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John Dickson Carr (November 30, 1906–February 27, 1977) was an American author of detective stories, who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.

Many of his novels had English settings, his best-known detective characters were English, and he is sometimes loosely grouped among "British-style" mystery writers. He 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.

Carr was a master of the 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 in 1981 as the best locked-room mystery of all time by a panel of 17 mystery authors and reviewers.

In 1950, his biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle brought Carr the first of his two Special Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America; the second came in 1970, in recognition of his 40-year career as a mystery writer. He was also presented the MWA's Grand Master award in 1963.

Publications

Henri Bencolin

1. It Walks By Night – 1930
2. The Lost Gallows – 1931
3. Castle Skull – 1931
4. The Waxworks Murder – 1932 (US title: The Corpse In The Waxworks)
5. The Four False Weapons, Being the Return of Bencolin – 1937

Dr. Gideon Fell

1. Hag's Nook – 1933
2. The Mad Hatter Mystery – 1933
3. The Eight of Swords – 1934
4. The Blind Barber – 1934
5. Death-Watch – 1935
6. The Hollow Man – 1935 (US title: The Three Coffins)
7. The Arabian Nights Murder – 1936
8. To Wake the Dead – 1938
9. The Crooked Hinge – 1938
10. The Black Spectacles – 1939 (US title: The Problem Of The Green Capsule)
11. The Problem of the Wire Cage – 1939
12. The Man Who Could Not Shudder – 1940
13. The Case of the Constant Suicides – 1941
14. Death Turns the Tables – 1941 (UK title: The Seat of the Scornful, 1942)
15. Till Death Do Us Part – 1944
16. He Who Whispers – 1946
17. The Sleeping Sphinx – 1947
18. Below Suspicion – 1949 (with Patrick Butler)
19. The Dead Man's Knock – 1958
20. In Spite of Thunder – 1960
21. The House at Satan's Elbow – 1965
22. Panic in Box C – 1966
23. Dark of the Moon – 1967

Sir Henry Merrivale (as Carter Dickson)

1. The Plague Court Murders - 1934
2. The White Priory Murders- 1934
3. The Red Widow Murders - 1935
4. The Unicorn Murders - 1935
5. The Punch and Judy Murders -1936 (UK title: The Magic Lantern Murders)
6. The Ten Teacups - 1937 (US title: The Peacock Feather Murders)
7. The Judas Window - 1938 (alternate US paperback title: The Crossbow Murder)
8. Death in Five Boxes - 1938
9. The Reader is Warned - 1939
10. And So To Murder - 1940
11. Murder in The Submarine Zone - 1940 (US title: Nine - And Death Makes Ten, also published as Murder in the Atlantic)
12. Seeing is Believing (novel) - 1941 (alternate UK paperback title: Cross of Murder)
13. The Gilded Man - 1942 (alternate US paperback title: Death and The Gilded Man)
14. She Died A Lady - 1943
15. He Wouldn't Kill Patience - 1944
16. The Curse of the Bronze Lamp - 1945 (UK title: Lord of the Sorcerers, 1946)
17. My Late Wives - 1946
18. The Skeleton in the Clock - 1948
19. A Graveyard To Let - 1949
20. Night at the Mocking Widow - 1950
21. Behind the Crimson Blind - 1952
22. The Cavalier's Cup - 1953

Colonel March

1. The Department of Queer Complaints (as Carter Dickson) (detective: Colonel March) - 1940 (The 1940 volume contains 7 stories about Colonel March and 4 non-series stories. The 7 March stories were reprinted as Scotland Yard: Department of Queer Complaints, Dell mapback edition, 1944.)
2. Merrivale, March and Murder - 1991 'The Department of Queer (ODD) Complaints' It contains all the COLONEL MARCH of SCOTLAND YARD stories. In the early 1950s Boris Karloff played Col. March in a weekly television series.

Novels as John Dickson Carr

• Poison in Jest – 1932
• The Burning Court – 1937
• The Emperor's Snuff-Box – 1942
• The Nine Wrong Answers – 1952
• Patrick Butler for the Defence – 1956

Historical Mysteries

• The Bride of Newgate – 1950
• The Devil in Velvet – 1951
• Captain Cut-Throat – 1955
• Fear Is the Same - 1956
• Fire, Burn! – 1957
• Scandal at High Chimneys: A Victorian Melodrama – 1959
• The Witch of the Low Tide: An Edwardian Melodrama – 1961
• The Demoniacs – 1962
• Most Secret (novel) – 1964 (This was a revision of a novel by Carr that was published in 1934 as Devil Kinsmere under the pseudonym "Roger Fairbairn")
• Papa La-Bas – 1968
• The Ghost's High Noon – 1970
• Deadly Hall – 1971
• The Hungry Goblin: A Victorian Detective Novel – 1972 (Wilkie Collins is the detective)

Novels as Carter Dickson

• The Bowstring Murders - 1933 (Originally published as by Carr Dickson, but Carr's publishers complained that the name was too similar to Carr's real name, so Carter Dickson was substituted.)
• The Third Bullet (John Dickson Carr) - 1937 (novella)
• Drop to His Death (in collaboration with John Rhode) - 1939 (US title: Fatal Descent)

Short story collections

• The Department of Queer Complaints, as Carter Dickson - 1940
• Dr. Fell, Detective, and Other Stories - 1947
• The Third Bullet and Other Stories of Detection - 1954
• The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes, with Adrian Conan Doyle - 1954 (Sherlock Holmes)
• The Men Who Explained Miracles - 1963
• The Door to Doom and Other Detections - 1980 (includes radio plays)
• The Dead Sleep Lightly - 1983 (radio plays)
• Fell and Foul Play - 1991 (includes the full version of The Third Bullet and the short story 'Harem-Scarem', not in any other collection)
• Merrivale, March, and Murder - 1991 (includes the short story 'The Diamond Pentacle', not in any other collection)
• The Kindling Spark: Early Tales of Mystery, Horror, and Adventure --2022. Apprentice stories edited by Dan Napolitano. Crippen & Landru

Plays

• Speak of the Devil - Crippen & Landru, 1994 (a radio play in 8 parts). First publication of Carr's radio script. Written in 1941.
• 13 to the Gallows - Crippen & Landru, 2008. A collection of 4 stage plays, written during the early 1940s —- 2 by Carr alone, and 2 in collaboration with the BBC's Val Gielgud.
• The Island of Coffins - Crippen & Landru, 2020. A collection of radio scripts from the Cabin B-13 radio show, written during 1948-1949.
• The Old Time Radio Series "Suspense" contains 22 plays by Carr, many of them not available in printed form. The radio plays can be downloaded from this site in MP3 format: https://archive.org/index.php]
• BBC has issued a set of two 90-minute cassettes containing radio versions of The Hollow Man and Till Death us Do Part featuring Donald Sinden as Dr. Fell (also now on CD).

Non-fiction

• Brotherhood of Shadows - 1923. Unpublished essay
• The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey - 1936, historical analysis of a noted murder of 1678
• The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 1949, the authorized biography