The Mad Hatter Mystery

by John Dickson Carr

Book Overview

At the hand of an outrageous prankster, top hats are going missing all over London, snatched from the heads of some of the city's most powerful people--but is the hat thief the same as the person... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B000TYYUIA
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: Collier Books
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Enjoyable entry from the impossible crime master

Classic golden-age-type mystery with an interesting setting. Fun to read, and not as pretentious as some of Carr's books could be.

I do not like thee Dr. Fell

"The Mad Hatter Mystery" has nothing to do with Alice's Mad Hatter, although it takes place in a locale almost as English as Wonderland, i.e. the Tower of London. As may be guessed from the murder site, Carr relies heavily on atmospherics: shrouds of fog; a corpse with a crossbow bolt through its heart; an unpublished story by Edgar Allen Poe; and above all a mad prankster who steals the headgear of London's elite (everyone wore hats in 1933) and displays his prizes in the most unlikely locations.When a corpse shows up near Traitor's Gate with a stolen top hat jammed on its head, Scotland Yard automatically enlists Dr. Gideon Fell to solve the bizarre murder. He solves it of course--but not before an army of suspects each takes his or her turn in the spotlight. Although Carr is most famously known for his locked -room mysteries and 'impossible' crimes, he was also a master of the eerie atmosphere. "The Mad Hatter Mystery" has both in great quantity: lots of macabre touches; and the solution will surprise even the keenest mystery buff. Dr. Fell's tics and grotesqueries aren't as intrusive as in some of Carr's other mysteries starring his massive, eccentrically-dressed detective. The doctor also shows a great deal of restraint (for him) in dropping hints that he already knows the identity of the murderer, even though it's only page forty-five and the reader has two-hundred-and-forty-one pages to go before he or she figures out whodunit. Supposedly modeled after Carr's idol, G.K. Chesterton, Dr. Fell also resembles a jovial Father Christmas or a President Chester A. Arthur, resting comfortably after a vast meal that was consumed with countless pints of beer. He's not my favorite fictional detective, although he appeared in twenty-three novels culminating in "Dark of the Moon" (1967). However, I do like Carr's atmospheric mysteries so I'll probably end up reading all twenty-three of 'em. This is one of the best, so far.