At the hand of an outrageous prankster, top hats are going missing all
over London, snatched from the heads of some of the city's most powerful
people--but is the hat thief the same as the person responsible for
stealing a lost story by Edgar Allan Poe, the manuscript of which has
just disappeared from the collection of Sir William Bitton? Unlike the
manuscript, the hats don't stay stolen for long, each one reappearing in
unexpected and conspicuous places shortly after being taken: on the top
of a Trafalgar Square statue, hanging from a Scotland Yard lamppost, and
now, in the foggy depths of the Tower of London, on the head of a corpse
with a crossbow bolt through the heart. Amateur detective and
lexicographer Dr. Gideon Fell is on the case, and when the dead man is
identified as the nephew of the collector, he discovers that the
connections underlying the bizarre and puzzling crimes may be more
intimate than initially expected.
Reprinted for the first time in thirty years, the second novel in the
Dr. Gideon Fell series, which need not be read in any order, finds the
iconic character investigating one of the most extraordinary murders of
his career. A baffling whodunnit with menace at every turn, The Mad
Hatter Mystery proves that Carr is the "unexcelled master of creepy
erudition, swift-moving excitement and suspense through atmosphere" (New
York Times).
