The Arabian Nights Murder; The Burning Court; Gideon Fell 11 The Problem of the Wire Cage)

520 Pages·2013·46.38 MB·English

by  Carr John Dickson

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THREE DETECTIVE NOVELS
including
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS MURDER
THE BURNING COURT
THE PROBLEM OF THE WIRE CAGE
by
JOHN DICKSON CARR
Harper& Brothers, Publishers New York
THREEDETECTIVE NOVELS
©
Copyright 1959 by Harper & Brothers
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS MURDER: Copyright 1936 by John Dickson Carr
THE BURNING COURT: Copyright 1937 by John Dickson Carr
THEPROBLEMOFTHEWIRECAGE: Copyright 1939byJohnDicksonCarr
Printed in the United States of America
All rights in this book are reserved.
No part of the book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written per-
mission except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Brothers
49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N. Y.
FOREWORD
By Howard Haycraft
We all know what is meant by a musicians' musician, an actors' actor, or
a ball players' ball player. In a similar sense it can truthfully be said that
John Dickson Carr is a detective story writers' detective story writer. There
canbe fewhigher professional compliments.
John Carr is that rarity, a truly transatlantic author. American born, he
has divided his writing life between his native country and England. He
holds the unique distinction of having been (at different times) Honorary
Secretary of the London Detection Club and President of the Mystery
Writers of America. A lover of good talk, he is renowned in both groups for
his coruscating wit, his doughty championship of the "pure" detective story
against all comers, and his devotion to amateur theatricals (qualities by no
means absent from his fiction).
In the opinion of outstanding critics and thousands of readers. Dr. Gideon
Fell, Carr's principal detective character, sups at detection's high table with
Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Father Brown. In point of fact, his resem-
blance to Father Brown's creator, the late and great Gilbert K. Chesterton,
seems more than accidental.
John Dickson Carr's mastery of the locked-room mystery has become so
legendary that we tend to forget some of his other talents—the deft charac-
terization and taste for the bizarre, the humor and unerring sense of the
macabre, above all the contagious gusto and vitality—that have long made
him a top favorite on both sides of the water.
It was the publisher's happy idea to bring back in this volume three out-
standing novels of Carr's earlier years, carefully chosen to give full play to
all of the author's diverse talents. I am not sure which I would rather be:
the readerwho meets these stories for the firsttime, with the joy of discovery
still before him, or one who savors this hearty and heady fare for the second
time.
Digitized by tine Internet Archive
in 2010
littp://www.archive.org/details/threedetectivenoOOcarr
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS MURDER
"You swear by the Beard of the Prophet. Then could not the
teller of tales make us a curious story even out of a beard?"
—Arabian Nights' Entertainment
"I hesitated; and at length a single word, uttered distinctly
but slowly, and as if breathlessly spoken, fell upon my ear; it
was, 'Whiskersl'"
—Life of the Rev. R. H. Barham