Locked room mysteries
A body in a room locked from the inside. No way in, no way out, and yet someone did it. A reader’s guide to the oldest puzzle in detective fiction: what it is, ten books to read, and the five ways every sealed room is opened.
What is a locked room mystery?
A locked room mystery is a crime that looks impossible. The victim is found in a place nobody could have entered or left: a room bolted from the inside, a house surrounded by untouched snow, a cabin watched all night. The question is not only who, but how.
It is the purest form of the fair-play puzzle. The writer shows you the room, the lock, the window and the body, and promises that the answer is in plain sight. All the reader has to do is see it before the detective explains it.
Ten locked room mysteries to read
- The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The short story that started it all: two women dead in a fourth-floor room locked from the inside, and C. Auguste Dupin reasoning his way in.
- The Big Bow Mystery
Often called the first full-length locked room novel. A man found dead in his bolted London bedroom, and a solution that still surprises.
- The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Sherlock Holmes, a sealed bedroom, a dying woman's last words and a bell-pull that rings nothing. Conan Doyle's own favourite.
- The Mystery of the Yellow Room
The French classic, by the author of The Phantom of the Opera. A scream in the night, a room locked from the inside, and the attacker vanished.
- The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins in the US)
The master of the form at his best. It contains Dr Fell's famous lecture on every way a locked room can be done.
- Hercule Poirot's Christmas
A cruel old man, a family gathered for Christmas, a locked door and a scream. Christie's answer to readers who wanted more blood.
- Death from a Top Hat
Written by a stage magician, solved by one. Misdirection is the whole trick, on the page and in the room.
- Rim of the Pit
A snowbound lodge, a séance, and a crime nobody could have committed. Regularly voted one of the best impossible crime novels.
- The Honjin Murders
A wedding night, a sealed annexe and untouched snow all around. The book that brought the locked room to Japan.
- The Fourth Door
The modern French heir to Carr: a haunted room in an English village and a plot that turns over twice.
Start with Poe for the history, Carr for the craft and Christie for pure enjoyment. If you read only one, read The Hollow Man.
The five ways a locked room is solved
In The Hollow Man, John Dickson Carr lets his detective stop the story and list every way a sealed room can be explained. Most solutions, then and now, fall into a handful of families. Knowing them will not spoil a good book. It will make you a better reader of one.
- The killer was never inside. The death was caused from outside the room: through a gap, a chimney or a window that only looks shut, or by something set up in advance and left to do its work.
- The victim was alive when the room was sealed. The victim locked the door themselves, already wounded or poisoned, or died later of something done earlier. The room was sealed honestly. The timing was not.
- The room was never really sealed. A key turned from outside, a bolt that drops by itself, hinges taken off and put back, a door locked by whoever found the body. Every lock has a story; check it.
- The time is wrong. A clock put forward, a voice that was not the victim's, a witness who heard something at the wrong moment. Move the time of death and the impossible becomes simple.
- The killer came in with the rescuers. The door is broken down, everyone rushes in, and in that confusion the killer does what they came to do, or quietly hides what gave them away.
How to solve one yourself
Write down every fact that makes the crime impossible: the bolt, the key, the snow, the time. Then ask of each one: who told me this, and could it be wrong? The impossible always rests on one fact that everybody believes and nobody checked.
Watch the people who found the body. Watch the clocks. And never trust a room that was locked “from the inside” until you have seen how.
A case where you are the detective
Every case in A Murder in Pieces begins in a study at first light. No door forced. No window open. Whoever came in was invited, and walked out again on quiet, familiar feet. Four country houses, four murders, and each chapter ends at a real puzzle on the page. Solve the ten puzzles and a logic grid names the killer.
Want to try first? Solve a free murder mystery logic puzzle, or look for a present in our gift guide for mystery lovers.