The Burning Court - Tapa blanda

A classic tale combining hints of the supernatural and an 'impossible' murder. The death of Miles Despard looks simple enough. But then how does the housekeeper see a woman walk through a wall? And how would someone walk through a door that had been bricked up two hundred years ago? To all intents and purposes, it looks as if someone has come from the past to commit the murder, but could that really be the case? Surely not...

Born in 1906, John Dickson Carr was an American author of Golden Age 'British-style' detective stories. He published his first novel, It Walks by Night, in 1930 while studying in Paris to become a barrister. Shortly thereafter he settled in his wife's native England where he wrote prolifically, averaging four novels per year until the end of WWII. Well-known as a master of the locked-room mystery, Carr created eccentric sleuths to solve apparently impossible crimes. His two most popular series detectives were Dr. Fell, who debuted in Hag's Nook in 1933, and barrister Sir Henry Merrivale (published under the pseudonym of Carter Dickson), who first appeared in The Plague Court Murders (1934). Eventually, Carr left England and moved to South Carolina where he continued to write, publishing several more novels and contributing a regular column to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. In his lifetime, Carr received the Mystery Writers of America's highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and was one of only two Americans ever admitted into the prestigious - but almost exclusively British - Detection Club. He died in 1977.