The Problem of the Wire Cage: A Gideon Fell Mystery

By John Dickson Carr

Book Overview

John Dickson Carr is famous for his puzzling "impossible crime" plots, in which corpses are discovered in scenarios that seem to lack any logical explanation, concealing clues as to how the murder was committed and how the body arrived in its current setting.

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. Before determining the perpetrator of the strangulation, the local authorities are first confronted by the utter implausibility of the location--two interlocking questions puzzling enough to stump even the most seasoned inspector.

The bafflement is reaching a harried volley by the time amateur sleuth Dr Gideon Fell gets involved, but he soon shows that the knotted plot is no match for his deductive powers. Before he can serve up a dazzling explanation of whodunnit, though, Fell will have to sort through a confounding set of clues in search of a diabolical killer and a bizarre murder method.

Reissued for the first time this century, The Problem of the Wire Cage is an atmospheric and amusing Golden Age mystery with a memorable puzzle at its centre. It's sure to please long-time fans of John Dickson Carr and is also a great entry point into his beloved Gideon Fell series.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1613164874
• ISBN13: 9781613164877
• Release Date: January 2024
• Publisher: American Mystery Classics
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 7.6"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully Written British Tennis Set Mystery!

Carr is among the very top "Whodunnit" Authors of them all, and is always in top form. Here we have a classic love triangle, suspects arguing about how they'd like to "murder" someone after a rainy tennis match, and Carr's unmatched methods to do the dirty deed. Not to mention one of the more bizarre detectives , Dr Gideon Fell, social snobbery at its worst, a yahoo Texan at a circus full of acrobats. The killer is fairly easy to identify, and there's the usual red herrings thrown in, and the solution may be a bit unrealistic, but I've read many at least as zany! You just can't miss with the great John Dickson Carr!

Another impossible murder

"The Problem of the Wire Cage (1939)" is the opposite of a locked-room mystery. In this book, a man is strangled to death on a sand tennis court. Only one set of footprints leads across the court--and they belong to the corpse.Okay, whodunit? As usual in a 'Golden Age' mystery, there are lots of suspects and motives. The corpse was a particularly venomous sort of ladies man who never did an honest day's work. Everyone disliked him except for his adopted father, and that included his two discarded mistresses, his fiancée and the guy who keeps proposing marriage to her, and an acrobat.Some of my favorite theories as presented by the various characters involved ice skates, sneaking up behind the victim by walking on one's hands, and making one's way to the middle of the court by creeping across the wire netting.Then a second victim is murdered (taking out my favorite suspect), and Carr's gigantic Dr. Gideon Fell must clear up all of the false theories and discover the real murderer.Carr plays fair with his readers. All of the clues needed to solve this mystery are presented, including (in my Bantam edition, at least) a diagram of the tennis court. The author demolishes the false theories with ponderous ease, including a hilarious passage where two well-meaning clue-hunters wreck several tennis courts by trying to prove that the murderer could have crept along the overhead netting. The solution involves a fairly complex set-up, but revolves around the particular relationship that the victim had with his murderer, so I don't think Carr was blind-siding his readers.Although this author was an American most of his mysteries (including this one) are set in England. If you're a fan of the technical, or "Impossible! No one could have committed this murder!" mystery, "The Problem of the Wire Cage" should hold your interest through that proverbial rainy afternoon.

Carr is the master magician of mystery writers

Carr is my favorite mystery writer of all time. I read this book over twenty years ago and most of his others, too. The set up for this story is classic. And you have the added fun of watching the police going off in the wrong direction based on faulty evidence while the heroes of the story stay one step ahead of them in pursuit of the solution to the puzzle. Carr is a master story teller, with a sublime gift of language and a silly streak. While the solution to this book is, perhaps, a bit creaky nowadays, it still is well worth the read. Few too many mystery writers these days would even attempt to create a story with this sort of complexity and panache. I keep looking but have not found one who can hold a candle to Carr.

A classic mystery, with a riddling plot . . .

John Dickson Carr is a great mystery writer from the era of Ellery Queen and other masters. This book involves a murder that takes place on a tennis court-- the wire mesh fencing around the court is the "wire cage" of the title. This is one of those murders which "could not possibly have been committed" but was. The riddle type mystery involves interesting characters who have all sorts of dynamics going-- passionate love, old hatreds, rivalries, and so forth. If you like the sort of mystery that challenges you to identify the killer, this one's for you. It's great to see some of these classics in print.