The golden age of detective fiction gifted us with numerous star names. An honorable place in this constellation 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 the public to the amateur sleuth Dr. Gideon Fell. The hero's appearance was allegedly modeled after another luminary of the detective genre — Gilbert Chesterton, and his merits in the history of the detective genre, according to most admirers of Carr's work, truly command respect. Thus, writer Kingsley Amis in his essay "My Favorite Detectives" named Dr. Fell "one of the three great successors of Sherlock Holmes."
"The Case of the 'Thousand and One Nights'" (1936) tells of a mysterious incident in a museum of Oriental culture: in an ancient carriage, a corpse is found with a false beard and fake sideburns. The case is taken up by Dr. Gideon Fell — an eccentric amateur detective with encyclopedic knowledge in the field of criminology and a penchant for theatrical effects. And while he steps closer to the solution, the number of suspects multiplies, each with their own skeletons in the closet and plausible motives for murder…
