::AMAZON REVIEWS::

Too Dry And Technical
John Dickson Carr excelled at devising "impossible" crimes and then explaining how they occurred. Unfortunately, some of his clever solutions are abstruse and difficult to follow.

Some consider THE THREE COFFINS Carr's masterpiece. To me it reads like a school textbook: diagrams, lists of facts, characters making long statements. Dr. Gideon Fell is described so briefly that he is almost unvisualizable, and the supporting characters aren't memorable. The solution is surprising and unique, but involves a lot of technical details that would have to work just right. The first three Gideon Fell mysteries--"Hag's Nook," "The Mad Hatter Mystery," and "The Eight of Swords"--are much better. So are Carr's Sir Henry Merrivale mysteries (written under the name Carter Dickson).

Alternate title: The Hollow Man (1935)
This author is known as the Master of the Locked Room Mystery, and he does not disappoint his aficionados in "The Three Coffins." In fact Carr's serial detective, Gideon Fell takes a chapter off from the plot to present his famous 'locked room' lecture to a handful of long-suffering friends.

I can just picture myself with his friends after a nice lunch in the pub, throwing myself about and moaning, "Not THAT lecture again. Let's get on with the plot." All I got out of the lecture were the many ways ice and frozen blood could be used to kill someone who is supposedly alone in a sealed room.

Plus if you ask me, the murders in this book were cheats done with smoke (actually snow) and mirrors, and a clock that only the lumbering Dr. Fell had the brains to notice was incorrectly set. However, I don't read this author for his intricate murder set-ups. I read his books for their wonderfully ominous atmosphere. Here Carr does not disappoint. In "The Three Coffins," three brothers, jailed in Transylvania for bank robbery fake their deaths during an outbreak of the plague and are buried alive. The one with the shovel in his coffin digs his way to freedom, then leaves his brothers in their graves and runs off alone with the hidden bank loot.

Let's just say that the two brothers who are left behind play important roles in the murder and counter-murder many years later in London. I don't want to give away the plot, gimmicky though it is. Read "The Three Coffins" for a few good shudders.

amongst the best of a very dated literary genre...
'Three Coffins' is certainly a class act. Complete with bizarre characters, a locked room murder, magic (!), and a sleuth who knowingly outwits everyone, this book is an over-the-top, hysterical example of detective stories (by the likes of Ngaio Marsh, Agatha Christie, Earl Stanley Gardner) adored by generations. It also has a delightfully dated 1930s London feel (think cardigans, fireplaces, smoking jackets, etc).

So snuggle up on a winter's evening, place your brain in 'suspend disbelief' mode, and enjoy this very clever yet silly story by John Dickson Carr. If nothing else it will bring a smile to your face.

THREE COFFINS
This is the book for mystery lovers who love a locked room mystery. John Dickson Carr is the king of the locked room mystery and this is his best work by far.

The most famous of them all but not the best
`The Three Coffins' fully bears out what I've felt about John Dickson Carr's work - his murders are often so diabolical and inexplicable that any rational explanation of them has to be somewhat of a letdown. In this case he successfully keeps the reader so focussed on the chilling circumstances surrounding the deaths that the reader barely stops to question what he/she is reading. I'm not convinced that the clue that enabled Dr Fell to overturn the apparent ordering of the facts was entirely `fair' (in that it does not give the reader a fair chance to decipher it). This sticks out as a flaw in what is otherwise a riveting read. The chapter where Dr Fell expounds on locked room crimes can be adopted as a thesis on the subject.