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Fell and Foul Play
RRP: $19.95
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You Save: $ 19.95 ( 100% )
Manufacturer: International Polygonics
Author: John Dickson Carr
Publisher: International Polygonics
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price:
You Save: $ 19.95 ( 100% )
Manufacturer: International Polygonics
Author: John Dickson Carr
Publisher: International Polygonics
Average Customer Rating:
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Fell and Foul Play Description
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9781558820715
ISBN: 155882071X
Label: International Polygonics
Manufacturer: International Polygonics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 383
Publication Date: 1991-05
Publisher: International Polygonics
Studio: International Polygonics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9781558820715
ISBN: 155882071X
Label: International Polygonics
Manufacturer: International Polygonics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 383
Publication Date: 1991-05
Publisher: International Polygonics
Studio: International Polygonics
Editorial Review of Fell and Foul Play
Customer Reviews of Fell and Foul Play
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The Best of Them?
Review: Every time I re-read my copy of FELL AND FOUL PLAY, which I bought at Aardvark Books here in San Francisco, used, for $6, I get a little chortle of glee when I think that on Amazon the cheapest copy is $74 or something. For I have been stiffed so often on books that getting a bargain is an anomalous thrill, like the nerd getting lucky at the sex club. Anyhow my other thought is that FELL AND FOUL PLAY may actually be the best of Carr's books, even his novels. Editor Doug Greene contributes some amazingly sharp, clear and perceptive introductions to each piece, and his addition of several of Carr's radio plays was a canny one indeed, really making the Dr. Fell section radiate with everything we want Carr to be--spooky, atmospheric, haunted, and of course, madly clever (and profligate with his plots--it's hard to believe he wrote dozens of these little plays, just tossed them off like beads from a Mardi Gras float.)
Of course it's also hard to believe Ellery Queen (and Anthony Boucher) did the same--at the height of their careers, thought of new plots every week, and so many of them corkers!
Here my favorite Fell stories begin with "The Wrong Problem," which I have never forgotten after reading it as an impressionable boy of ten, a story which made me hysterically averse to looking through binoculars (or field glasses, as Fell calls them)--those who know the story will know why. I wonder if Carr himself had a phobia, or perhaps a fetish, involving voyeurism, or more simply put, about seeing the forbidden, for you don't have to be Freudian to recognize what happens in that tower window, so long ago, as having sexual overtones in the nth degree. Anyhow it's great, and has that satisfying clink one feels when a solution is particularly simple and elegant! Of course the swan had a slashed neck, etc.
"Who Killed Matthew Corbin?" the three part radio play, is almost as good, and much more twisty and turny--with a tiny cast of suspects (small as a mid period Ellery Queen =novel!) we turn on one, then another, and we just don't get it--although I knew it was something about that vest (or "waistcoat" as Fell calls it). The other plays all have marvels in them, the creepy seance of "The Black Minute," the haunted telephone of "The Dead Sleep Lightly." Only "The Devil in the Summerhouse" lacks something, and I think this may be that I heard the non-Dr Fell version of this play years ago, and I think I prefer it, perhaps stubbornly, the way we often want to have a dish the way Mother used to make it, and even Julia Child's recipe won't satisfy us afterwards.
The historical mysteries--well, I know some of you love them coming from Carr, but to me, I always feel a little let down when I hear we're being taken back to the days of Austerlitz and powder and patch and old time bobbies and what have you (and duels, Carr should have stuck his duels where the son don't shine). "The Third Bullet," nearly a novel, rounds out the collection, and it's in the much longer expanded version that is so much superior to the one Ellery Queen or whoever cut down, the one we were stuck with for all these years!
I forget exactly why I like this book better than its successor, MERRIVALE, MARCH and MURDER--well, THE THIRD BULLET is so much better than its equivalent in the second book, the tedious Merrivale adventure of "All in a Maze." And the "new" material of MM&M isn;t really topnotch (like "The Diamond Pentacle")--though welcome of course. But this book is the greatest! Thank you Doug Greene! I'm sorry for all you people who can't afford a copy but do try inter library loan (if Amazon will allow me such a euggestion, we'll see). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Review Summary: The Best of Them?
Review: Every time I re-read my copy of FELL AND FOUL PLAY, which I bought at Aardvark Books here in San Francisco, used, for $6, I get a little chortle of glee when I think that on Amazon the cheapest copy is $74 or something. For I have been stiffed so often on books that getting a bargain is an anomalous thrill, like the nerd getting lucky at the sex club. Anyhow my other thought is that FELL AND FOUL PLAY may actually be the best of Carr's books, even his novels. Editor Doug Greene contributes some amazingly sharp, clear and perceptive introductions to each piece, and his addition of several of Carr's radio plays was a canny one indeed, really making the Dr. Fell section radiate with everything we want Carr to be--spooky, atmospheric, haunted, and of course, madly clever (and profligate with his plots--it's hard to believe he wrote dozens of these little plays, just tossed them off like beads from a Mardi Gras float.)
Of course it's also hard to believe Ellery Queen (and Anthony Boucher) did the same--at the height of their careers, thought of new plots every week, and so many of them corkers!
Here my favorite Fell stories begin with "The Wrong Problem," which I have never forgotten after reading it as an impressionable boy of ten, a story which made me hysterically averse to looking through binoculars (or field glasses, as Fell calls them)--those who know the story will know why. I wonder if Carr himself had a phobia, or perhaps a fetish, involving voyeurism, or more simply put, about seeing the forbidden, for you don't have to be Freudian to recognize what happens in that tower window, so long ago, as having sexual overtones in the nth degree. Anyhow it's great, and has that satisfying clink one feels when a solution is particularly simple and elegant! Of course the swan had a slashed neck, etc.
"Who Killed Matthew Corbin?" the three part radio play, is almost as good, and much more twisty and turny--with a tiny cast of suspects (small as a mid period Ellery Queen =novel!) we turn on one, then another, and we just don't get it--although I knew it was something about that vest (or "waistcoat" as Fell calls it). The other plays all have marvels in them, the creepy seance of "The Black Minute," the haunted telephone of "The Dead Sleep Lightly." Only "The Devil in the Summerhouse" lacks something, and I think this may be that I heard the non-Dr Fell version of this play years ago, and I think I prefer it, perhaps stubbornly, the way we often want to have a dish the way Mother used to make it, and even Julia Child's recipe won't satisfy us afterwards.
The historical mysteries--well, I know some of you love them coming from Carr, but to me, I always feel a little let down when I hear we're being taken back to the days of Austerlitz and powder and patch and old time bobbies and what have you (and duels, Carr should have stuck his duels where the son don't shine). "The Third Bullet," nearly a novel, rounds out the collection, and it's in the much longer expanded version that is so much superior to the one Ellery Queen or whoever cut down, the one we were stuck with for all these years!
I forget exactly why I like this book better than its successor, MERRIVALE, MARCH and MURDER--well, THE THIRD BULLET is so much better than its equivalent in the second book, the tedious Merrivale adventure of "All in a Maze." And the "new" material of MM&M isn;t really topnotch (like "The Diamond Pentacle")--though welcome of course. But this book is the greatest! Thank you Doug Greene! I'm sorry for all you people who can't afford a copy but do try inter library loan (if Amazon will allow me such a euggestion, we'll see). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.