Hag's Nook

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He comes striding towards us now, beaming like Old King Cole. You can probably hear him chuckle. If he wheezes a little, that's due to his weighing more than three hundred pounds.You notice the three chins, and the bandit's mustache, and the eyeglasses on the black ribbon. He removes his hat with old-school courtesy. Don't try to bow, doctor! He is Gideon Fell, doctor of philosophy and expert on crime.

In these words, the narrator of one of John Dickson Carr's radio-plays introduced Dr. Gideon Fell. As Anthony Boucher remarked, "the detective story in the grand manner demands a Great Detective," and Dr. Fell is a memorable sleuth. He is larger-than-life both in his appearance and in his actions. Although he is not fiction's most gargantuan crime-solver-that prize belongs to the four hundred pounds of Paul McGuire's Superintendent Fillinger — he puts most detectives literally in the shade. But, to be fair, Carr may have exaggerated Fell's weight for radio audiences; normally he is described as being a relatively svelte twenty stone. It is, however, more than his size which allows Fell to dominate his cases: "A huge joy of life, a piratical swagger merely to be hearing and seeing and thinking, glowed from him like steam from a furnace. It was like meeting Father Christmas." Everything about Fell is in large proportions. He smokes a meerschaum which he fills from an obese pouch. He consumes countless tankards of beer and is fond of whisky ("It would be very interesting to find any whisky that could take the top of my head off'), and he has a tremendous fund of miscellaneous knowledge about obscure subjects.

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