8 Classic Locked Room Mysteries
The “locked-room” or “impossible crime” mystery is a sub genre of crime and detective fiction, and one of our favorites. Here is a selection of 8 Classic Locked Room Mysteries for your enjoyment!
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8 Classic Locked Room Mysteries
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
- The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
- The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
- The King Is Dead by Ellery Queen
- Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson
- The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill
- Suddenly At His Residence by Christianna Brand
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- Europe teeters on the brink of war. Ten strangers are invited to Soldier Island, an isolated rock near the Devon coast. Cut off from the mainland, with their generous hosts Mr and Mrs U.N. Owen mysteriously absent, they are each accused of a terrible crime. When one of the party dies suddenly they realise they may be harbouring a murderer among their number.
The 10 strangers include a reckless playboy, a troubled Harley Street doctor, a formidable judge, an uncouth detective, an unscrupulous mercenary, a God-fearing spinster, two restless servants, a highly decorated general and an anxious secretary. One by one they are picked off. Who will survive? And who is the killer? Copies of an ominous nursery rhyme hang in each room, the murders mimicking the awful fates of its ‘Ten Little Soldier Boys’.
The Honjin Murders by Seishi Yokomizo
In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumour – it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions about the Ichiyanagis around the village.
Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi family are woken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music – death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. The murder seems impossible, but amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is determined to get to the bottom of it.
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
The murderer of Dr Grimauld walked through a locked door, shot his victim and vanished. He killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at each end, yet nobody saw him, and he left no footprints in the snow.
And so it is up to the irrepressible, larger-than-life Dr Gideon Fell to solve this most famous and taxing of locked-room mysteries.
The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux
The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux, is one of the first locked room mystery crime fiction novels. It was first published in France in 1908. It is the first novel starring fictional detective Joseph Rouletabille, and concerns a complex and seemingly impossible crime in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room. Leroux provides the reader with detailed, precise diagrams and floorplans illustrating the scene of the crime. The emphasis of the story is firmly on the intellectual challenge to the reader, who will almost certainly be hard pressed to unravel every detail of the situation.
The King Is Dead by Ellery Queen
King Bendigo is the wealthiest man alive. He has an enormous security detail on his private island, quite capable of dealing with international aggression. But not threats from within his own family. Fearing for his life, he hires brilliant detective Ellery Queen.
The King’s brother Judah makes no secret of wanting him dead. He even gives a date and a time on which he will commit the crime. So when the day comes, the King is kept in a hermetically sealed room while his brother is guarded by Ellery himself.
But the King is still shot…
This is the ultimate in locked-door mysteries from a classic master of the genre.
Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson
Freelance scribe Ross Harte is working on an essay about the sad state of the modern mystery novel when a scream comes from the hallway: “There is death in that room!” Harte finds a trio of conjurers trying to get into the apartment of his neighbor, the mysterious Dr. Cesare Sabbat, famed occultist and, for the past few minutes, a corpse.
They break down the door to find Sabbat lying in a pentagram, face twisted from the agonies of strangulation, but with no bruises on his neck. All the doors were locked, and the windows drop straight down to the river below. Only an escape artist could get out of that room, and Sabbat knew quite a few. To make sense of this misdirected muddle, the police bring in the Great Merlini, an illusionist whose specialty is making mysteries disappear.
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill
The Big Bow Mystery by Israel Zangwill is a pioneering work of detective fiction. Set in Victorian London, it revolves around the perplexing murder of a wealthy recluse, Mr. Arthur Constant, found dead in a locked room with a gunshot wound and no apparent murderer.
The brilliant but unorthodox detective, Horace Grodman, is determined to unravel the enigma. As he investigates, Grodman encounters a web of deceit, hidden motives, and unexpected twists. With the clock ticking, he employs logic and intuition to solve the baffling case, ultimately revealing the surprising truth behind the locked room mystery.
Suddenly At His Residence by Christianna Brand
While the Blitz bombards London, the boisterous grandchildren of Sir Richard March have descended upon Swanswater Manor in Kent for a family gathering and the finalising of the patriarch’s will. Disgruntled by the behaviour and life choices of his heirs, March seems poised to deny all of them their inheritance and heads out to his lodge to make arrangements – only to be discovered dead the next morning with strychnine in his blood.
With evidence at the crime scene suggesting that nobody could possibly have entered the lodge to murder March, Inspector Cockrill has the challenge of finding any plausible solution for this impossible crime before death comes to darken the doors of Swanswater once more.
If you enjoyed 8 Classic Locked Room Mysteries, check out 20 Best Detective Series to Read
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