Dr. Gideon Fell is a fictional character created by John Dickson Carr. He is the protagonist of 23 mystery novels from 1933 through 1967, as well as a few short stories. Carr was an American who lived most of his adult life in England; Dr. Fell is an Englishman who lives in the London suburbs.<!-- -->

Dr. Fell is supposedly based upon G. K. Chesterton (author of the Father Brown stories), whose physical appearance and personality were similar to those of Doctor Fell.

Biography

Dr. Fell is a corpulent man with a moustache who wears a cape and a shovel hat and walks with the aid of two canes.

Chapter 17 of the novel The Three Coffins contains Dr. Fell's "locked room lecture", in which he delineates many of the methods by which apparently locked-room or impossible-crime murders might be committed. In the course of his discourse, he states, off-handedly, that he and his listeners are, of course, characters in a book.

Chronology

  1. 1933, Hag's Nook
  2. 1933, The Mad Hatter Mystery
  3. 1934, The Eight of Swords
  4. 1934, The Blind Barber
  5. 1935, Death-Watch
  6. 1935, The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins)
  7. 1936, The Arabian Nights Murder
  8. 1937, To Wake the Dead
  9. 1938, The Crooked Hinge
  10. 1939, The Black Spectacles (The Problem of the Green Capsule/Mystery in Limelight)
  11. 1939, The Problem of the Wire Cage
  12. 1940, The Man Who Could Not Shudder
  13. 1941, The Case of the Constant Suicides
  14. 1941, Death Turns the Tables (The Seat of the Scornful)
  15. 1944, Till Death Do Us Part
  16. 1946, He Who Whispers
  17. 1947, The Sleeping Sphinx
  18. 1949, Below Suspicion
  19. 1958, The Dead Man's Knock
  20. 1960, In Spite of Thunder
  21. 1965, The House at Satan's Elbow
  22. 1966, Panic in Box C
  23. 1967, Dark of the Moon
  24. 1991, Fell and Foul Play (collection of short stories and radio scripts)

Adaptations

Television

The Seat of the Scornful was adapted as a 1956 episode of the BBC Sunday Night Theatre. Fell was portrayed by Finlay Currie.

Till Death Do Us Part was adapted for Italy's RAI network in 1982. Titled Tre colpi di fucile, Fell was played by Giampiero Albertini.

Radio

Fell appeared in several original BBC radio dramas written by Carr. The first was a three-part serial, Who Killed Matthew Corbin? broadcast on 7 December 1939 (part 1), 7 January 1940 (part 2) and 14 January 1940 (part 3). This was followed a month later by The Black Minute broadcast on 14 February 1940 and then The Devil in the Summerhouse broadcast on 14 October 1940. These starred Gordon McLeod as Fell.

Fell returned in The Dead Sleep Lightly broadcast by the BBC on 23 August 1943, voiced by Milton Rosmer. Carr's The Clock Strikes Eight (which includes a clue recycled from Who Killed Matthew Corbin?) was broadcast on 18 May 1944, for the anthology series Appointment with Fear. Richard George played Fell.

In 1946, Abraham Sofaer played Fell in another version of The Devil in the Summer House for the BBC Light Programme. The story was again adapted in 1947 with Julian Mitchell.

In 1959, The Hollow Man was adapted for Saturday Night Theatre, with Norman Shelley as Fell.

Donald Sinden played Dr. Fell in a series of eight BBC Radio adaptations of Carr's novels from 1997 to 2001.

References

  • Mystery list Dr. Fell books