In Spite of Thunder

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In Spite of Thunder
Author John Dickson Carr
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Series Gideon Fell
Genre(s) Mystery, Detective novel
Publisher Hamish Hamilton (UK) & Harper (USA)
Publication date 1960
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 186 pp (Bantam A2267, first paperback edition, 1961)
Preceded by The Dead Man's Knock (1958)
Followed by The House at Satan's Elbow (1965)

In Spite of Thunder, first published in 1960, is a detective story by John Dickson Carr which features Carr's series detective Gideon Fell. This novel is a mystery of the type known as a locked room mystery (or more accurately a subset of that type known as an "impossible crime").

[edit] Plot summary

Beautiful film star Eve Ferrier's first husband Hector Matthews died in a strange accident while the couple was visiting Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden in 1939. Although he had no reason to commit suicide, he apparently flung himself off a high balcony to die hundreds of feet below -- and no one was near him at the time. Years later, she is married to actor Desmond Ferrier and living in Geneva. Brian Innes is asked by a doting father in Berlin to come to Geneva and warn his daughter Audrey Page against continuing to associate with Eve. When Innes meets Eve Ferrier at a bizarre and creepy nightclub called "The Cave of the Witches", she proves to be carrying a perfume bottle filled with oil of vitriol, apparently to her own surprise. The next day, when Innes calls upon her, Eve falls to her death from a high balcony -- and no one was near her at the time. It takes the investigative genius of Gideon Fell to penetrate the ingenious murder method and reveal the criminal.