John Dickson Carr

"In the celebrated author's first mystery novel, Inspector Bencolin must unravel a dumbfounding locked-room mystery and apprehend a sadistic killer. In the smoke-wreathed gloom of a Parisian salon, Bencolin has summoned his allies to discuss a peculiar case. A would-be murderer imprisoned for attempting to kill his wife has escaped and is known to have visited a plastic surgeon. Bencolin predicts his return, and his worst suspicions are realized when...

The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of the prophecy were filled at last ... 'The murderer of Dr Grimauld walked through a locked door, shot his victim and vanished. He killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at each end, yet nobody saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow. And so it is up to the irrepressible, larger-than-life...

"Among all of Carr's ingenious crime scenes, the present case is one of his best known: a dead man is found strangled in the middle of a clay tennis court, just after a storm. In the damp dirt, there is one set of footsteps -- his own -- leading back to the grass; the court is otherwise untouched. There are no trees above from which the body may have fallen and no other visible means by which it may have been transported to its final resting place....

"'The purpose, the illusion, the spirit of a waxworks. It is an atmosphere of death. It is soundless and motionless... Do you see?' Last night Mademoiselle Duchêne was seen heading into the Gallery of Horrors at the Musée Augustin waxworks, alive. Today she was found in the Seine, murdered. The museum's proprietor, long perturbed by the unnatural vitality of his figures, claims that he saw one of them following the victim into the dark--a lead that...