description The Hollow Man Overview
The Hollow Man is a 1935 detective novel by John Dickson Carr, published in the United States as The Three Coffins. It features the scholar and amateur investigator Dr. Gideon Fell confronting two apparently impossible murders involving sealed or closely observed locations. The novel is especially noted for Fell's self-aware lecture explaining major techniques used to construct locked-room mysteries, making it a central work for readers of Golden Age impossible-crime fiction.
insights Ranking position
The Hollow Man ranks #5 of 183 in the Detective Novel ranking, behind The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, ahead of The Devotion of Suspect X.
help The Hollow Man FAQ
Why does The Hollow Man have the alternate title The Three Coffins?
John Dickson Carr's novel was published in the United States as The Three Coffins and in Britain as The Hollow Man. Both titles refer to the same 1935 Gideon Fell mystery.
What are the impossible crimes in The Hollow Man?
The story centers on two killings that appear physically impossible, including a shooting connected to a locked room and another crime under close observation. Dr. Gideon Fell must explain both the mechanics and the misleading evidence.
What is Dr. Fell's locked-room lecture?
Fell temporarily addresses the reader and categorizes common ways that apparently sealed-room murders can be engineered. The chapter is famous because it functions as both part of the investigation and a playful essay on detective-fiction mechanics.
Is The Hollow Man considered John Dickson Carr's best locked-room mystery?
It is regularly treated as one of Carr's defining impossible-crime novels. Its reputation rests especially on the paired puzzles and Fell's explicit discussion of locked-room solutions.
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