John Dickson Carr

John Dickson Carr (November 30, 1906 - February 27, 1977) was a prolific American-born author of detective stories who also published under the pen names Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson, and Roger Fairbairn. He is generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of so-called "Golden Age" mysteries, complex, plot-driven stories in which the puzzle is paramount. Most of his many novels and short stories feature the elucidation, by an eccentric detective, of apparently impossible, and seemingly supernatural, crimes. He was influenced in this regard by the works of Gaston Leroux and by the Father Brown stories of G. K. Chesterton. Carr modeled his major detective, the fat and genial lexicographer Dr. Gideon Fell, on Chesterton.

Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale

Carr's two major detectives, Dr. Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale, are, superficially, quite similar. Both are large, blustery, upper-class, eccentric Englishman somewhere between middle-aged and elderly. Dr. Fell, however, who was frankly fat and walked only with the aid of two canes, was clearly modeled on the British writer G. K. Chesterton and was at all times a model of civility and geniality. He had a great mop of untidy hair that was often covered by a "shovel hat" and he generally wore a cape. He lived in a modest cottage and had no official connection to any public authorities. H.M., on the other hand, although stout and with a majestic "corporation", was physically active and was feared for his ill-temper and noisy rages. A well-heeled descendant of the "oldest baronecy" in England, he was an Establishment figure (even though he frequently railed against it) and in the earlier novels was the head of the British Secret Service. Even in the earliest books the bald, bespectacled, and scowling H.M. was clearly a Churchillian figure and in the later novels this similarity was somewhat more consciously evoked.

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Recently, the Dr. Fell books have generally been considered to be Carr's major achievement. Earlier, however, H.M. had been regarded more favorably by a number of critics. Howard Haycraft, author of the seminal Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story, wrote in 1941 that H.M. or "The Old Man" was "the present writer's admitted favorite among contemporary fictional sleuths."

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