The golden age of detective fiction gave readers a veritable constellation of bright names. Agatha Christie, Gilbert Chesterton, Earl Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout—step by step, their books refined the laws of the genre, and the novels, long since established as acclaimed classics, even today remain beloved reading and a benchmark of quality for new generations of authors. A place of honor among these masters belongs to John Dixon Carr (1906–1977)—a virtuoso of “impossible crimes” and impeccably constructed mysteries of the “locked room.”
The novel “The Case of the Prolonged Killings” continues the series featuring the amateur sleuth Dr. Gideon Fell. It is believed that, in many respects, the hero was outwardly inspired by another pillar of the genre—Gilbert Chesterton—while, in the opinion of Carr’s fans, his role in the detective tradition is truly significant. No wonder the writer Kingsley Amis, in the essay “My Favorite Detectives,” called Dr. Fell “one of the three great successors of Sherlock Holmes.”