The Hollow Man

"The Hollow Man is not only my favourite Carr novel, I think it’s my favourite mystery novel overall. It’s a perfect mystery, a perfect puzzle, and it’s a wonderful balance of meticulous plotting and a sense of the Gothic , the fantastic and the almost surreal, at which Carr was particularly brilliant. The novel begins with Professor Charles Grimaud in a London tavern. He is visited by a mysterious and sinister figure – an illusionist who goes by the name of Pierre Fley. His life is threatened by this illusionist, and that is the event that kickstarts the plot. The impossibility is perfectly handled and ingeniously constructed. What happens is an eerie, almost phantom-like figure wearing a face mask appears at Grimaud’s house and visits him in his study. A gunshot is heard. When the other residents of the building all flock to investigate, Grimaud is found shot dead in his study, and the mysterious figure, the Hollow Man of the title, has vanished without trace. That’s the premise and it’s irresistible to someone like me because it’s got illusion, all manner of psychological trickery, but also this genuine sense of eeriness and menace to it. I don’t think Golden Age detective fiction receives the recognition it deserves for its engagement with the Gothic and its employment of Gothic tropes in its execution. It’s Carr at his very best, and it also features his most popular detective, Dr. Gideon Fell. In The Hollow Man , Gideon Fell gives what is now known as his ‘locked room lecture,’ which is a fascinating section of the book where Gideon Fell effectively steps out of the narrative and his role as a fictional character and addresses the reader directly. He then runs through a string of ingenious methods by which a locked-room mystery can be created. It’s all in service to the overarching mystery of The Hollow Man , but it’s also a kind of academic, scholarly study of the sub-genre as a whole and the methods that so many writers before him had used. Dickson Carr is effectively showboating his mastery of the genre while, at the same time, reinforcing the seeming impossibility of the mystery in The Hollow Man. The ‘locked room lecture’ serves multiple functions within the story, but it has also been published in its own right as an article or almost academic piece on the locked-room mystery. I find that particularly fascinating and useful. It’s something I refer back to, aside from the brilliance of the novel itself. Most definitely, yes! John Dickson Carr was easily the match of Agatha Christie, in my opinion. Nobody wrote murder mysteries like he did. Agatha Christie was a superb plotter as well, but Carr will always be my favourite. The Gideon Fell series is long-running, and there are many novels to dive into, but the quality is really startling. I think you could start anywhere, but The Hollow Man remains my favourite."