Most of Carr's novels have one of the "Big Three" as the detective; Henri Bencolin, Sir Henry Merrivale or Dr. Giddeon Fell. However, he also wrote a number of novels without these detectives and a few of them rank with the best of his work. In addition to the traditional mystery story he also displayed his writing skills in some "non-traditional" mysteries. They include a round-robin novella (No Flowers by Request) with five other mystery writers, a biography of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a collaboration with Adrian Conan Doyle in writing a collection of new Sherlock Holmes stories, a true crime mystery (The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey) whereby Carr solves a real life murder that had went unsolved for over 250 years, as well as an impressive array of historical mysteries, a subgenre of the mystery novel that can arguably be said to have been invented by Carr.

If the title is in Red then the US edition is NOT the true first edition.Unless otherwise stated the U.S. paperback is the first edition.