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.

Non-fiction

• The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey - 1936, historical recreation of a noted murder in 1678
• The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 1949, the authorized biography