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John Dickson Carr Biography |
John Dickson Carr (1906 - 1977) was a prolific American author of detective stories who also published under the pennames Carter Dickson and Carr Dickson. He was a master of the locked room mystery, in which victims are killed under apparently impossible circumstances, such as in a locked room, or on a sandy beach on which there are no footprints but the victim's own.
Carr has been widely praised for the ingenuity of his plots, although many of his novels have been criticized for the flatness of characterization. In this respect, The Black Spectacles (1939, aka The Problem of the Green Capsule), with its undistinguished characters but brilliant central puzzle, may be the quintessential Carr. The most highly-regarded of his novels include The Hollow Man (1935, aka The Three Coffins), The Case of the Constant Suicides (1941), and He Who Whispers (1942).
Carr mysteries feature many series detectives (including Colonel March, Sir Henry Merrivale, and Henri Bencolin). However, most of Carr's best works features Dr. Gideon Fell.
Carr also wrote radio and film scripts: His 1943 half-hour radio play Cabin B-13 was expanded into a series on CBS in the early 1950s, and he wrote all those scripts. That radio play was also expanded into the script for the 1953 film Dangerous Crossing, directed by Joseph M. Newman and starring Michael Rennie and Jeanne Crain.
With Adrian Conan Doyle, the youngest son of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Carr wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories that were published in the 1999 collection The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes {ISBN 0157203383}. |
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