Carter Dickson

Carter Dickson is the pseudonym used by the famous American writer of detective stories, John Dickson Carr. Dickson was one of the prominent authors of his time who has written many successful novels based on the mystery and thriller genres. He was born on November 30, 1906 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, United States and died on February 27, 1977 in Greenville, South Carolina, United States. Dickson used to use a number of pen names for writing his novels, some of which include Carr Dickson, Roger Fairbairn, and Carter Dickson. Because of his extensive works based on the detective stories he is regarded as one of the noteworthy writers of the Golden Age mystery novels. His writings generally depict complex plots filled with puzzles. Dickson was very much influenced by the works of authors Gaston Leroux and G. K. Chesterton. He was particularly considered as the master of locked room mysteries, in which impossible crimes are solved by the detectives. The novel, The Hollow Man (1935) from the Dr. Fell mystery series is usually considered to be the masterpiece of Dickson. In the year 1981, the novel was selected as the best locked room mystery of the era by a panel consisting of 17 reviewers and mystery authors. Apart from the modern day mystery novels, Dickson also used to write historical mystery novels. During his writing career, Dickson had lived in England for many years. This had allowed him to form groups with the British-styled writers of mystery. Also, because of his stay in England, many of his novels had plots based on English settings and depicted estates and country villages as well as English characters. The two most famous fictional detective characters developed by Dickson were also English.