Don't Wake the Dead

The golden age of the detective novel brought us many star names. A deserved place in this galaxy rightfully belongs to John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) — a virtuoso master of perfectly constructed "impossible crimes in a locked room." In 1933, John Dickson Carr first introduced to the public the amateur sleuth, the eccentric Dr. Gideon Fell, whom English writer Kingsley Amis referred to in his essay "My Favorite Detectives" as "one of the three great successors of Sherlock Holmes."

On a chilly London morning, the hero of the novel "Don't Wake the Dead" (1938), Christopher Kent, found himself at the door of the "Royal Crimson" hotel with not a penny to his name. He was already regretting getting involved in this silly bet, but to win it, he only needed to hold out for a day. The clever solution to where to find breakfast literally fell from the sky, and who could have guessed that just an hour later, due to this harmless adventure, he would find himself a suspect in the murder of an unknown lady? Only Gideon Fell might have been able to help him...