Diagnosis: Impossible. The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne

Article number 10123692

Northmont, Connecticut during the 1920s. A sleepy New England community of shops, farms, white churches, and red schoolhouses. But when Sam Hawthorne became Northmont’s doctor in 1922, he found an eerie town of ghosts and demons—or so it seemed. With wit and logic, Dr. Sam recounts twelve seemingly impossible cases: a horse and carriage vanishing inside a covered bridge; a corpse in a sealed time capsule; a railway guard murdered in a locked caboose with “elf” written in blood; a minister stabbed with a gypsy knife; an actor strangled by a haunted oak tree; the sudden appearance of a homicidal ghost in a black cape; a small boy vanishing from a schoolyard swing; and more. Contents: Introduction; The Problem of the Covered Bridge; The Problem of the Old Gristmill; The Problem of the Lobster Shack; The Problem of the Haunted Bandstand; The Problem of the Locked Caboose; The Problem of the Little Red Schoolhouse; The Problem of the Christmas Steeple; The Problem of Cell 16; The Problem of the Country Inn; The Problem of the Voting Booth; The Problem of the County Fair; The Problem of the Old Oak Tree; plus A Dr. Sam Hawthorne Chronology by Marvin Lachman. John Dickson Carr said of Hoch, “Satan himself would be proud of his ingenuity.”