The House at Satan's Elbow

Dr. Gideon Fell #21

by John Dickson Carr

Pennington Barclay, master of Greengrove, is murderously attacked in his library by something that exits from a completely locked room. The entire household - including Pennington's beautiful young wife, and his nephew, who is the heir to Greengorove by virtue of a newly discovered will - is in an uproar. Estelle Barclay, Pennington's spinsterish and psychically inclined sister, insists the attack was the work of Greengrove's ghost.

Enter Dr. Gideon Fell.

Armed with his everlasting cigar and a wicked cane, this obstreperous extrovert succeeds in frightening everybody. For as horror piles on horror throughout the night, Gideon Fell evidences interest in one person only - the spirit of the long-departed Mr. Justice Wildfare.

But Fell was not up to any supernatural hijinks, as someone well knew... the one who was most frightened of all.

Genres: Mystery, Detective, Classics, Crime, Fiction

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

AKA Carter Dickson, Carr Dickson and Roger Fairbairn.

John Dickson Carr was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, in 1906. It Walks by Night, his first published detective novel, featuring the Frenchman Henri Bencolin, was published in 1930. Apart from Dr Fell, whose first appearance was in Hag's Nook in 1933, Carr's other series detectives (published under the nom de plume of Carter Dickson) were the barrister Sir Henry Merrivale, who debuted in The Plague Court Murders (1934).