Don't Wake the Dead

The Golden Age of detective fiction gave us many famous names. Works by writers such as Agatha Christie, Gilbert Chesterton, Earl Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout—developed and refined the detective genre. Their novels, firmly recognized as classics to this day, are still loved by readers and set the standard of quality for later generations of authors of detective stories. A place of honor in this galaxy rightly belongs to John Dickson Carr (1906–1977), a master of perfectly constructed “impossible crimes in a locked room.” The novel “Don’t Wake a Dead Man” continues the series of books about the amateur detective, Dr. Gideon Fell. The hero’s appearance is believed to have been modeled on another titan of the detective genre—Gilbert Chesterton—and, according to most admirers of Carr’s work, his contributions to detective history truly deserve respect. For instance, writer Kingsley Amis, in his essay “My Favorite Detectives,” called Dr. Fell “one of three great successors of Sherlock Holmes.”