The Secret of the Mad Hatter

The golden age of the detective genre gifted us many star names. The works of writers such as Agatha Christie, Gilbert Chesterton, Earl Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout developed and refined the detective genre; their novels, unequivocally recognized as classics, are still loved by readers today and serve as a standard of quality for subsequent generations of detective story authors. A prestigious place in this constellation rightly belongs to John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) — a virtuoso master of perfectly constructed "impossible crimes in locked rooms." In 1933, in the novel "The Witch's Cave," John Dickson Carr first introduced the public to the amateur detective Dr. Gideon Fell. The appearance of the hero was allegedly based on another luminary of the detective genre — Gilbert Chesterton, and his merits in the history of the detective genre, according to most admirers of Carr's work, truly command respect. Thus, writer Kingsley Amis in his essay "My Favorite Detectives" called Dr. Fell "one of the three great successors to Sherlock Holmes." This collection includes the first three novels from the series chronicling the adventures of Dr. Fell: "The Witch's Cave" (1933), "The Secret of the Mad Hatter" (1934), and "Eight Swords" (1934).