The Three Coffins (abridged) [Paperback]

John Dickson Carr (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Lawrence E. Spivak (1944)
• ASIN: B001M06Y9S
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mystery in the hands of a master, February 16, 2009

By 

S. Schwartz "romonko" (alberta canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Three Coffins (Mass Market Paperback)

And that is what Carr was. His books are still as entertaining today as they were when written in the 30's and 40's. He is a master of the "locked room" mystery, and the impossible crime. In this book there is a wonderful locked room mystery, and an open-air "locked room style" murder. Both crimes are connected, but the planning was so detailed and so ingenious that the puzzles even tax the considerable brain of Gervaise Fen. These are truly impossible and unexplainable crimes, and the underlying story behind it all goes back 30 years to another country and another time entirely. Fen and his crew must figure out the old mystery before they can begin to understand the new ones. The characters are truly wonderful, and the book is a classic. For anyone who loves detection novels, John Dickson Carr should not be missed.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Greatest Impossible Crime ever written, August 11, 2007

By 

James Ryan Mehaffey "Master of the Impossible" (Mooresville, N.C. USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Three Coffins (Mass Market Paperback)

This is the greatest impossible crime, ever written. None can echo its ingenuity, none (with the exception of Rim of the Pit), can even come close.

Dr. Grimaud was working in his study on Saturdat evening, when a man wearing a mask ran into his study, and locked the door behind him. Witness's heard the two arguing, then gunshots. When the door was opened, Superintendent Hdley, and Dr. Gideon Fell found Grimaud alone, the murderer having walked through a locked door, infront of witness's, and not been seen or stopped.

Suspicion automatically turned to a deranged magician named Pierre Fley, who had threatened to kill Grimaud. But, shortly affter Grimaud was killed, Fley is shot dead on a snowy street. Witness's on both ends of the street see no one shoot him, despite the fact he was shot at close range. No footprints were found in the snow, and the gun was found laying ten feet away. Once again, the murderer was invisible, and lighter then air.

The only man who can solve this case is Dr. Fell. With his locked room lecture, and curiosity of bells, can he solve how a man was invisible, and lighter then air?

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Also titled: "The Hollow Man" (1935), October 24, 2007

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Three Coffins (Hardcover)

This author is known as the Master of the Locked Room Mystery, and he does not disappoint his aficionados in "The Three Coffins." 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 Three Coffins," 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 Three Coffins" for a few good shudders.

Note: this mystery is also published under the alternate title, "The Hollow Man" (1935).