"The Hollow Man" by John Dickson Carr

In 1981, this was selected as the best locked room mystery of all time by a panel of mystery authors and reviewers.

A man, threatened by his brother, a stage illusionist, is found dying with a bullet in him after the police break into a locked room. Just before a shot was heard, an eyewitness stationed in the room opposite saw a second man ('the hollow man') enter and be received by the victim. But there is no sign of the second man. There is no escape from the room and the only window leads to a sheer drop and the recently fallen snow shows no sign of footprints.

The dying man manages to utter a few cryptic words and phrases which have to be reconstructed from two witnesses: "Your list. Hover. Not suicide. He couldn’t use rope. Roof. Snow. Fox. Too much light. ‘My list. Bath. Salt. Wine. He couldn’t use rope. Roof. Snow. Too much light. Got gun. Don’t blame poor—" (Ch 5) 

Almost as soon as the dying man has been whisked away to hospital, word comes in of a second crime. A man trudging through the snow  down the middle of a nearby cul de sac drops dead of another bullet fired into his back from very close range; the revolver is found nearby. From the position of the wound it cannot have been suicide and yet three independent witness saw it all happen and testify that there was no-one else near him.

Two impossible crimes, linked to mysterious happenings in Transylvania. Dr Gideon Fell, assisted by his tame Scotland Yard detective, investigates.

In chapter 17, the detective treats the reader to a lecture on the different types of locked room mystery, prefaced with the words: "we’re in a detective story, and we don’t fool the reader by pretending we’re not."Already, another character has explained about conjuring tricks and explains that most of the audience are disappointed if the trick is explained to them, often because it is so simple. Well I wasn't disappointed by the denouement. The hallmarks of a classic of this genre is that the solution to the mystery IS obvious in hindsight but that the reader DIDN'T guess it. I guessed the 'who' but the 'how' left me baffled. But the author played fair. Looking back, I can see that he left any number of clues in plain sight. Yes, there were plenty of red herrings but that's the misdirection of the conjurer. There is no doubt that this  whodunnit was most ingeniously constructed. 

It was hugely atmospheric too. 

Selected quotes:

• "The first deadly walking of the hollow man took place on that last-named night, when the side streets of London were quiet with snow and the three coffins of the prophecy were filled at last." (Ch 1)
• "If PQ = pq, it is therefore quite obvious that PQ = pq + pß + qa + aß." (Ch 3)
• "The word ‘electric’ is meaningless, yet it conveys the wave that came with her; something of crackle and heat and power, like a blow." (Ch 4)
• "She moved towards them, her shoes creaking." (Ch 4)
• "In my experience with locked-room murders, getting in and getting out are two very different things. It would throw my universe off balance if I found an impossible situation that worked sensibly both ways." (Ch 5)
• "the whole world goes skew-wiff because we like to pretend that people under twenty will never have any emotions, and people over forty never had." (Ch 5)
• "The doctor, Rampole knew, was firmly under the impression that he was a model of tact. Very often this tact resembled a load of bricks coming through a skylight. But his utter conviction that he was doing the thing handsomely, his vast good-nature and complete naïveté, had an effect that the most skilled tact could never have produced. It was as though he had slid down on the bricks himself to offer sympathy or shake hands." (Ch 6)
• "I remember that debate as ending in the most beautiful and appalling row I ever heard outside a Pacifist meeting." (Ch 6)
• "Did you ever hear of a schoolmaster being a blackmailer? No, no. They’re much too worried about what people might find out about them." (Ch 8)
• "Terror ceases to be terror if it has to be worked out like an algebra problem." (Ch 12)
• "The windows were at all stages of cleanliness, from the bright gloss of a jeweller’s farthest down on the right, to the grey murkiness of a tobacconist’s nearest on the right: a tobacconist’s that seemed to have dried up worse than ancient tobacco, shrunk together, and hidden itself behind news placards headlining news you never remembered having heard of." (Ch 13)
• "Most people are so damned disappointed when they know the secret. Either, in the first place, the thing is so smart and simple – so simple it’s funny – that they won’t believe they could have been fooled by it. ... Or, in the second place, it’s a trick worked with a confederate. That disappoints ’em even more. They say, 'Oh, well, if you’re going to have somebody to help—!’ as though anything was possible then." (Ch 14)
• "expressions were hollowed out as though snapped by a camera." (Ch 14)
• "the word 'improbable' is the very last which should ever be used to curse detective fiction in any case. A great part of our liking for detective fiction is based on a liking for improbability." (Ch 17)
• "Butlers have long gone out of fashion; the invalid in the wheel-chair is too suspect; and the placid middle-aged spinster has long ago given up homicidal mania in order to become a detective." (Ch 17)

A classic of the genre. October 2024

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God