One of my favorite locked room murders, because I am such a Martin Beck fan, is THE LOCKED ROOM. by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.
In
one part of town, a woman robs a bank. In another, a corpse is found
shot through the heart in a room locked from within with no firearm in
sight. Although the two incidents appear unrelated, Detective Inspector
Martin Beck believes otherwise, and solving the mystery acquires the
utmost importance. I am not sure this one would rank with the greats but setting and character rate high with me.And this, of course, is from one of the greatest series ever.
What are some other great ones? Locked room mysteries, that is.
6 comments:
I'm a fan of John Dickson Carr's locked room mysteries. I've also been reading Edward D. Hoch's short stories lately. Many of Hoch's stories involve locked room puzzles. Isaac Asimov edited Tantalizing Locked Room Mysteries, a very good anthology.
I will look for that, George.
I agree with George that Ed Hoch had a lot of great locked room short stories, many in the Dr. Sam Hawthorne series, though he specialized in other "impossible" crimes. My late friend Bob Adey was a locked room expert - he had thousands of books and stories in his collection and published LOCKED ROOM MURDERS with an exhaustive list of books and stories, and a separate section of solutions. The introduction to the book is a short history of locked room mysteries and gives a number of highlights, centering on Carr, of course. Carr's THE THREE COFFINS (aka THE HOLLOW MAN) has Dr. Gideon Fell's "locked room lecture" in which he lays out as many different possibilities as possible in the form. It is considered one of the classics. Clayton Rawson (a magician himself) wrote DEATH FROM A TOP HAT (and three others) featuring magician-detective The Great Merlini.
Every time you mention Sjowall and Wahloo I look at the ten books on the shelf and think again, I need to reread them, starting with ROSEANNA, but there are so many new books....
That is the trouble, Jeff. I have hundreds of books I have never read, plus ones at the library. Really hard to reread except for stories.
I also rarely reread, which occasionally makes me wonder why I keep thousands of books on shelves here, other than they are “nice to have” and I might want to reread or refer to one someday.
Ah, this is a classic series, Patti. I've not dipped into it for too long, so I'm glad of the reminder.
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