The Hollow Man (Black Dagger Crime Series) [Hardcover]

John Dickson Carr (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Chivers North Amer (July 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0745186378
• ISBN-13: 978-0745186375
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,080,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wild Ride, November 8, 2007

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hollow Man (Paperback)

I first read THE THREE COFFINS many years back when it was in the Dell "Great Mysteries" series, so that dates me! The book was probably 95 cents, something like that. Anyhow as a young boy I was terrified and pumped up from page one, as Charles Grimaud holds court in the back room of the pub off Russell Square and the conversation turns to the idea of vampires, ghosts, shapes emerging from sealed coffins, revenants who have escaped the cold hand of death. Then the door opens and a strange figure appears--Pierre Fley the conjuror. Re-reading this book again (under its original title, THE HOLLOW MAN), I was struck by how many notes the recent film THE ILLUSIONIST "borrows" from Carr's book; many of the stunts have their origins here, most of all the spooky atmosphere.

The solution is remarkably simple in one sense, though I agree with the other reviewer that it's pretty coincidental that nobody at the scene of one of the crimes had any idea of what the real time was -- not even the killer. If one person had been wearing a watch the whole jig would have been up by page 60 of the book. That said, we admire Carr's daring in allowing his plot to turn on so simple a matter as "timeline." Now that I think of it, a similar shock effect in William Goldman's 70s novel CONTROL might also have been "inspired" by THE HOLLOW MAN.

Is the book perfect? No way, it is not really even the best of the Dr. Fell novels. Ted and Dorothy Rampole seem largely wasted, de trop, while Hadley seems more of a dim bulb than he has to be. (He's usually as sharp as Fell--well, nearly so.) And the different eccentric characters in Grimaud's bohemian, Aleister Crowley-like salon are all pretty interchangeable. One plotline might have been more developed: the creepy interest of the middle-aged painter Burnaby in Grimaud's nubile daughter Rosette. I imagine Carr was thinking of an earlier, Victorian novel when he embarked upon this adumbrated plot--Dickens' last, unfinished thriller, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. ("Rosette" = "Rosa Bud"?)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Titles (The Three Coffins or The Hollow Man) - One Great Story, October 7, 2007

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hollow Man (Paperback)

The literary critic Julian Symons wrote, "The best Carr is the most ingenious, and my vote would go to The Hollow Man. The conjuror's illusion here is marvelously clever."

Mr. Symons may be right. I was fully engaged, fully attentive, throughout this ingeniously puzzling story (also known as The Three Coffins). I was completely perplexed by the three puzzles: the murder in the locked study; the murder on the open, trackless, snow covered street; and the significance of the chameleon overcoat.

John Dickson Carr is indeed a conjuror. In this particular story, The Hollow Man, Carr admits as much. In a digression (nearly an entire chapter) Carr departs from the story and discusses with the reader the nature of locked room mysteries. He goes so far as to say that solutions are apt to be disappointing, just as learning the secret behind a magician's stage illusion invariably is unsatisfying. Readers want to believe in an illusion and they expect the solution to be every bit as exciting as the illusion. Disappointment ensues when the solution proves too simple, too prosaic.

The solution to this mystery is a most unexpected twist, and it should not disappoint the reader by its simplicity. On occasion John Dickson Carr in his fervor to create the ultimate locked room mysteries has been guilty of withholding clues. (Most readers, like me, forgive his trespasses as the stories themselves are so fascinating and intriguing.) This time, however, the solution is fair, but as Symons observes, the illusion is marvelously clever. The surprise is startling, and probably will remain so even in a second reading.

Returning to Julian Symons, is this truly Carr's most ingenious mystery? I have read only a handful of Carr's stories (and fewer of those under his pseudonym Carter Dickson) and I continue to be surprised. I have yet to encounter a reworked solution. I have so much fun with Carr's locked room puzzles that I am quite happy to give him a little license, some latitude, in disguising his clues. I look forward to locating many more superb stories by John Dickson Carr.

The Hollow Man (1935) is the sixth appearance of Dr. Gideon Fell, perhaps Carr's most popular investigator. My copy of The Hollow Man was published in 2002 by Orion Books Ltd in softcover (larger than a standard paperback it measures about 5 by 8 inches). In the US it is more commonly found under the title The Three Coffins.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alternate title: The Three Coffins (1935), June 8, 2005

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Hollow Man (Black Dagger Crime Series) (Hardcover)

This author is known as the Master of the Locked Room Mystery, and he does not disappoint his aficionados in "The Hollow Man." In fact Carr's serial detective, Gideon Fell takes a chapter off from the plot to present his famous 'locked room' lecture to a handful of long-suffering friends.

I can just picture myself with his friends after a nice lunch in the pub, throwing myself about and moaning, "Not THAT lecture again. Let's get on with the plot." All I got out of the lecture were the many ways ice and frozen blood could be used to kill someone who is supposedly alone in a sealed room.

Plus if you ask me, the murders in this book were cheats done with smoke (actually snow) and mirrors, and a clock that only the lumbering Dr. Fell had the brains to notice was incorrectly set. However, I don't read this author for his intricate murder set-ups. I read his books for their wonderfully ominous atmosphere. Here Carr does not disappoint. In "The Hollow Man," three brothers, jailed in Transylvania for bank robbery fake their deaths during an outbreak of the plague and are buried alive. The one with the shovel in his coffin digs his way to freedom, then leaves his brothers in their graves and runs off alone with the hidden bank loot.

Let's just say that the two brothers who are left behind play important roles in the murder and counter-murder many years later in London. I don't want to give away the plot, gimmicky though it is. Read "The Hollow Man" for a few good shudders.