The golden age of the detective genre gifted us many star names. Works by writers such as Agatha Christie, Gilbert Chesterton, Earl Stanley Gardner, Rex Stout, developed and refined the detective genre; their novels, unconditionally recognized as classics, are still beloved by readers today and serve as a benchmark of quality for subsequent generations of authors of detective stories. An esteemed place in this galaxy rightfully belongs to John Dickson Carr (1906–1977) — a virtuoso master of perfectly constructed "impossible crimes in a locked room." In 1933, John Dickson Carr first introduced to the public the amateur detective Dr. Gideon Fell. The appearance of the hero was presumably modeled after another luminary of the detective genre — Gilbert Chesterton, and his contributions to the history of the detective genre, in the opinion of most admirers of Carr's work, genuinely command respect. Thus, the writer Kingsley Amis in his essay "My Favorite Detectives" called Dr. Fell "one of the three great successors of Sherlock Holmes."
This collection includes the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth novels of the cycle, telling about three new puzzling mysteries that Dr. Fell is to investigate: "The Dark Glasses" (1939), "The Fool's Cage" (1939), and, for the first time in a new translation, "The Man Who Wasn't Afraid" (1940).
