From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

The Hollow Man (Dr. Gideon Fell, #6)

John Dickson Carr

Start date: January 1, 2022

Finish date: January 31, 2022

Discussion: Group Challenges

Why we're reading this: The first in our new group challenge, reading books by members of the Detection Club
[close] The first in our new group challenge, reading books by members of the Detection Club

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What Members Thought

Mar 25, 2018 Christine PNW rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I am gobsmacked by this book.

I don't know where I picked up the notion that Carr wrote noir, but I cracked this book open expecting dames and hardboiled, hard drinking private dicks and speakeasies. It's hard to imagine how I could've been less accurate. The Hollow Man had gothic overtones, oblique references to vampires and supernatural happenings, direct references to the ghost story writer M.R. James, and an extremely snowy, almost Victorian, London atmosphere.

In other words, the background s ...more

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Jan 03, 2022 Susan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Published in 1935, this is the sixth mystery to feature Dr Gideon Fell and a classic of Golden Age crime. As such, it is an ideal first book for the challenge of Detection Club authors that one of my Goodreads groups have chosen this year. It is the classic locked-room mystery, with Dr Grimauld killed in a locked room and no sign of his murderer...

This is very much a puzzle, with clues to unravel and a number of different suspects. Although, to be honest, the plot is so involved you are a better ...more

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Jan 20, 2022 Lady Clementina ffinch-ffarowmore rated it really liked it

Shelves: england, john-dickson-carr, murder, mystery, london

Set in snowy London, with hints of people walking out of graves and of three coffins, links to Transylvania, two murders committed by an invisible person, and a solution I didn’t see coming at all, John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man made for an enjoyable read, especially in this season.

Our story, the sixth book to feature Carr's detective Dr Gideon Fell, introduces us to Professor Charles Grimaud, a scholar on all things supernatural but with a view to disproving them. A man of independent means Set in snowy London, with hints of people walking out of graves and of three coffins, links to Transylvania, two murders committed by an invisible person, and a solution I didn’t see coming at all, John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man made for an enjoyable read, especially in this season.

Our story, the sixth book to feature Carr's detective Dr Gideon Fell, introduces us to Professor Charles Grimaud, a scholar on all things supernatural but with a view to disproving them. A man of independent means, Grimaud has formed a sort of club with a few others to discuss supernatural subjects in books and otherwise. In one such meeting, an illusionist, Pierre Fley arrives out of the blue threatening Grimaud with his brother who's in his grave. Grimaud laughs it off but some days later when Fley was to call on Grimaud, he does appear at his home, or so it seems and is shown into Grimaud’s study. Soon after a shot is fired in the locked study. Grimaud is found shot but there is no sign of his murderer, not even footprints in the snow outside. And not 15 minutes later, a second death takes place, once again by an invisible hand, this time in the middle of a street with witnesses who swear there was no one near the victim or indeed, in the street.

Alongside in Dr Fell's home are gathered Superintendent Hadley and Fell's friends, the Rampoles; so when the threat to Grimaud is made known to them, all three men rush to his home only to find he has just been shot. While Dr Fell is able to instantly deduce some things about the professor which may relate to his murder, the case is far more complicated than first meets the eye.

This was my introduction to Carr and Dr Gideon Fell, and in the book he came across as rather Holmes-like relying on keen observation and deduction to get to the truth. Seeing the same things as others, he is able to get more out of it, and like Holmes is also into experiments, like in this book to decipher fragments of burnt letters. I enjoyed watching him investigate and also alongside, the Rampoles' efforts at cracking the case. (I noticed from others' reviews that they found Fell's mannerisms somewhat annoying, but these didn’t bother me at all; in fact I hardly noticed).

The book with its winter setting and spooky elements (even when we know and are in fact told from the start that there is nothing magical about the answer but it’s all an illusion) sets up the perfect atmosphere for this mystery since both crimes are committed by a seemingly invisible person.

But how did they make themselves invisible? Not in any way we can think up for the solution of this one was not just ingenious but one it takes some time to get one's head around in terms of all the little details—in fact there were some I’m still not wholly clear about; there are men in masks and a chameleon overcoat, more than one person with a secret and people aplenty around Grimaud but does any of them have a motive to kill him? There is some ‘magic’ involved certainly but in a different way than we think.

Another distinctive aspect of the book is that in one chapter, breaking the fourth wall so to speak, and to an extent perhaps the usual structure of the detective story,

Because…we’re in a detective story and we don’t fool the reader by pretending we’re not. Let’s not invent elaborate excuses to drag in a discussion of detective stories. Let’s candidly glory in the noblest pursuits possible to characters in a book.

Dr Fell goes into a detailed discussion on locked room murders examining possible scenarios and identifying different categories but also having warned uninterested readers to simply skip the chapter. I didn’t actually mind this chapter at all; instead I found myself thinking back to any locked room mysteries I could remember and working out which of his categories they would have fitted. Of course, he does mention plenty of detective fiction with some spoilers (as to who- and how- dunit) so you might want to bear that in mind; for me, I’m fairly sure I’ll have forgotten by the time I get to the stories in question 😊

4 stars!
...more

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Jun 04, 2025 Bev rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: british-mystery, bought-2015, vintage-mystery, mount-tbr-2025, mystery

Eccentric Professor Charles Grimaud, a student of legends and the supernatural, holds court regularly at a local tavern. He and his circle of friends discuss vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and the like--debating their reality and the sources of their legends. One evening a stranger bursts into their gathering speaking in a bizarre, somewhat threatening manner. He talks of men coming up out of their graves. He says that he has come out of the grave.

Yes, I have done it. But more! I have a brother w Eccentric Professor Charles Grimaud, a student of legends and the supernatural, holds court regularly at a local tavern. He and his circle of friends discuss vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and the like--debating their reality and the sources of their legends. One evening a stranger bursts into their gathering speaking in a bizarre, somewhat threatening manner. He talks of men coming up out of their graves. He says that he has come out of the grave.

Yes, I have done it. But more! I have a brother who can do much more than I can, and is very dangerous to you. I don't want your life; he does. But if he calls on you...

and later in the conversation

I have a last question for the famous professor. Some one will call on you one evening soon. I also am in danger when I associate with my brother, but I am prepared to run that risk. Some one, I repeat will call on you. Would you rather I did--or shall I send my brother?

The professor tells him to send the brother.

And several nights later someone does call upon the professor. And apparently he did want the professor's life. For when the night is over, Professor Grimaud is dead--shot to death in a locked room by a visitor who vanishes into thin air.

When Dr. Gideon Fell is regaled with the story of the tavern scene and learns that the visitor is expected that very night, he immediately gathers Ted Rampole (teller of the tale) and Superintendent Hadley, his detective friend, and insists that they make tracks for Grimaud's house. They're just in time to be told that there has been the sound of a gunshot and that the visitor is locked in the professor's study--with the professor. They manage to gain entrance and find Grimaud mortally wounded but the visitor is nowhere to be seen. The window is open, but there is a yard full of unmarked snow and no way to go out the window to the roof or another room.

Fell and Hadley and company have just started investigating the first impossible crime when another occurs. This time it is Pierre Fley, the man who confronted Grimaud at the tavern. And he was shot in the middle of a snow-covered street at close range. But three reliable witnesses swear there was nobody else near the stricken man and a voice came out of nowhere that said, "The second bullet is for you." Now our detectives have to figure out how the two men were connected and who wanted them both dead....oh, and, of course, the trifling little matter of how it was all done.

Carr works his locked room/impossible crime magic and comes up with a solution that I had to think about twice. There was one moment where I thought--but if X was going to do what Fell said he was going to do, then why did he need that? So, I had to go back and reread and then the light bulb went off. Oh, yeah. That's why. This is also the book that has the famous "locked room lecture" where Fell tells us straight up that he knows he's in the middle of a detective story and then goes on to explain the various ways to commit a murder in an apparently locked room. Naturally, he doesn't list the ways these two particular impossible crimes were contrived.

I have to admit that I was on the side of Hadley during this particular reading (I read this once before back in the mists of time--but it was long enough ago that all the details had dropped out of my head). I was a bit restless during the Fell lectures and just really wanted to get on with the story. But the impossible crimes are quite good and I enjoyed finding out how it was all done. [Though I have to say I could think of a better way for a certain item to have been hidden that would have been far less disastrous for the person doing the hiding...]. And other than when he was in full lecture mode, I enjoyed Dr. Fell and watching him go to work. This also has one of the better dying words clues among those I've come across. Quite good fun.

First posted on my blog My Reader's Block. ...more

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