Carr, John Dickson – The Bell Bookshop

The Seat of the Scornful

Emma — Fri, 10 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Over a long career in the courts Justice Horace Ireton has a garnered a reputation for merciless rulings and his dedication to meting out strict, impartial justice. Taking a break from his duty after a session of assizes, Ireton retreats to his seaside bungalow in Devon and turns his attention to family, and specifically in attempting to bribe his daughter's lover Morrell to leave her alone so that she may instead marry the respectable clerk, Fred Barlow. It seems something about the deal with Morrell must have gone amiss, however, when the police are called to the Justice's residence to find Morrell shot dead and the judge still holding a pistol. But would the lawman be so bold to commit a murder like this? With a number of strange items making up the physical evidence Dr Gideon Fell, himself an old friend of Ireton's, is summoned to help with the deceptively simple - yet complex - investigation.

Till Death Do Us Part

Emma — Tue, 10 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Crime author Dick Markham is in love again; his beau the mysterious newcomer to the village Lesley Grant. When Grant accidentally shoots the fortune teller through the side of his tent at the local fair - following a very strange reaction to his predictions - Markham is soon forced to consider whether his mysterious partner may be harbouring a dark and dangerous past. When the fortune teller is found dead in the night in an impossible locked-room setup, it seems it is not just Grant that may be hiding something from the rest of the village. Lured by the scent of the impossible case, Dr Gideon Fell arrives from London to match wits with a meticulous killer at large.

The Lost Gallows: A London Mystery

Emma — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Inspector Bencolin attempts to piece together a puzzle involving a disappearing street, a set of gallows which mysteriously reveals itself to a number of figures traipsing through the London fog, and the bizarre suggestion that a kind of fictional bogeyman, Jack Ketch, may be afoot and in the business of wanton execution.

It Walks By Night

Emma — Tue, 10 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Ten minutes after the Duc de Saligny entered the card room, the police burst in - and found he had been murdered. Both doors to the card room had been watched yet the murderer had gone in and out without being seen by anyone!

Dr Gideon Fell: Collected Cases x4

Emma — Thu, 07 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Donald Sinden stars as eccentric amateur sleuth Gideon Fell in these two full-cast BBC radio dramatisations of stories by John Dickson Carr.

One of the pre-eminent detectives of crime fiction’s Golden Age, Dr Gideon Fell is stout, jovial and fond of beer and band music. However, he also possesses a razor-sharp mind and extraordinary powers of deduction, which are frequently put to the test as he is called upon to solve seemingly impossible crimes. Created by the master of the locked-room mystery, John Dickson Carr, Dr Fell appeared in 23 novels, several short stories and plays, and numerous radio adaptations. These two dramas, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1997, see him embroiled in two inexplicable cases that have the police baffled.

In The Hollow Man, two murders are committed by someone who appears to be both invisible and lighter than air; while in The House in Gallows Lane, the peaceful English countryside of 1936 is disrupted by an alarming fortune-teller – and a mysterious death. These thrilling dramatisations star Donald Sinden as Gideon Fell with John Hartley as Hadley.

Classic Radio Crime: presenting vintage detectives for your investigation!

Duration: 2 hours 50 mins approx.