(Pre-written to cover a trip)
The might break the word barrier and become its own post. In, I know it will. 'The Hollow Man' is a legend in its own right amongst detective stories, and my own experience of it is dominated by my first exposure, which was the Radio 4 dramatisation starring Donald Sinden as amateur sleuth Dr Gideon Fell. If any of the other Carr novels approach this one in quality, then the author himself will be paramount amongst all the mystery writers, excepting Doyle, who doesn't really exist in any one genre, and is a category all of his own. However, that's a case for another day.
John Dickson Carr specialised in 'impossible crimes; and some his locked room mysteries are works of art. My experience is so far insufficient to allow putting this story at the top of his pile, but the resolution is so simple as to offer a full illumination based on one or two simple facts. What are those facts? Well, read it and find out!
As mentioned obliquely, 'The Hollow Man' is one of the Dr Gideon Fell mysteries (Carr had several series, including the books under his pseudonym Carr Dickson), and therefore features much harrumphing and contemplation of the facts at hand, and many theories, fancies and twists shot to pieces by the procession of events. There is also, famously, a chapter devoted to a lecture given by Fell on the categorisation and classification of locked room mysteries, in which Fell himself acknowledges his own status as a character in a television story, and adds much novelty to the other claims for this being Carr's masterwork. Some people prefer 'Till Death Do Us Part', but such a distinction will have to wait until I've read that other work.
Is 'The Hollow Man' really a masterwork? It's certainly very, very good, and holds up to re-reading (In one day, no less!) very well. This is where the Sinden influence breaks in, though, as his fruity voice washes over the whole story, enriching it unfairly. There's an awful lot of subjectivity creeping in here from that radio play. However, as I begin to hear you ask, “What's it about?”, it becomes clear that there has been a glaring omission.
A French amateur expert on the paranormal, a Professor Charles Grimaud, is murdered, apparently by someone who had publicly threatened him the week before at a club night for enthusiastic eccentrics. The killer thrust himself into Grimaud's study, locked the door behind him and shot the professor before promptly vanishing into thin air on a night laden with undisturbed snow all around. Simultaneously, the supposed killer is killed in the middle of an empty snowy street, at almost point blank range. No-one was there, and no traces remained of his attacker. Dr Fell and Superintendent Hadley are baffled!
It's a classic mystery, despite all my haphazard ramblings. A recommended story if you don't mind some meandering on the way to the final revelation we all expect in a mystery story. In this one, it involves an entirely non-supernatural Hungarian connection.
O.
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