In Spite of Thunder

infobox Book |
name = In Spite of Thunder
title_orig =
translator =


image_caption =
author = John Dickson Carr
cover_artist =
country = United Kingdom
language = English
series = Gideon Fell
genre = Mystery, Detective novel
publisher = Hamish Hamilton (UK) & Harper (USA)
release_date = 1960
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 186 pp (Bantam A2267, first paperback edition, 1961)
isbn =
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").

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.