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Topic: Locked room mystery


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  Locked room mystery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A locked room mystery is a sub-genre of detective fiction wherein a murder or other crime is apparently committed under impossible circumstances: no one could have entered or left the scene of the crime, and the death involved could not have been a suicide.
Typically, a "locked room" in this narrow meaning of the phrase is a room in which a murder is committed.
Even though the mystery or detective genre wasn't established until the 19th and 20th centuries, the apocryphal Biblical story of Bel and the Dragon has some similarities to locked room mysteries.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Locked_room_mystery   (3824 words)

  
 NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Locked room mystery
In crime fiction, a locked room mystery (or cosy) is a particular kind of mystery story, where a murder is apparently committed under impossible circumstances: no one could have entered or left the scene of the crime, and it could not have been a suicide.
In many locked room mysteries, plausibility was neglected in favour of ingenuity and maximum reader involvement to appeal to this sense of curious suspense.
In crime fiction, a locked room mystery is a particular kind of mystery story, where a murder is apparently committed under impossible circumstances: no one could have entered or left the scene of the crime, and it could not have been a suicide.
www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Locked-room-mystery   (6387 words)

  
 The Mystery of the Yellow Room - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Mystery of the Yellow Room: Extraordinary Adventures of Joseph Rouletabille, Reporter (in French Le mystère de la chambre jaune) is one of the first locked room mystery crime fiction novels.
John Dickson Carr, the master of locked-room mystery, named this as the 'finest locked room tale ever written' in his 1935 novel The Hollow Man.
Miss Stangerson is dead, killed in a locked room at the Chateau.
en.wikipedia.org /wiki/The_Mystery_of_the_Yellow_Room   (679 words)

  
 Locked room mystery   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
A locked room mystery in crime fiction is a story inwhich the reader is presented with a puzzle and encouraged to solve it before finishing the story and being told the solution.Its origins are often ascribed to Edgar Allan Poe ; this sub-genre ofdetective fiction flourished with the popularity of writers like AgathaChristie.
Typically, a "locked room" in this narrow meaning of the word -- also referred to as a "hermetically sealed chamber" -- is aroom in which a murder is committed.
In many locked room mysteries, plausibility was neglected in favour of ingenuity and maximumreader involvement to appeal to this sense of curious suspense.
www.therfcc.org /locked-room-mystery-134076.html   (813 words)

  
 Locked Rooms and Other Improbable Crimes.
The housekeeper on the floor swears she saw the man’s wife enter the room and never leave, but she is not in the room when the body is found.
There was only an unpoisoned cup of coffee in her room, the back door was locked, and the maid (innocent) was in the living room watching the front door.
A locked room fantasy, in which Hawk and Fisher, two captains of the guard (male and female, and married to each other), investigate the stabbing of a reformist councillor in his locked bedroom.
www.mysteryfile.com /Improbable.html   (4889 words)

  
 Peiratikos » Archives » Identity Crisis: The Locked-Room Mystery
Mystery stories may be classified along a spectrum of emphasis placed on puzzle-solving in the plot.
In some stories—the Sherlock Holmes stories, e.g.—much of the narrative consists of an investigation in which clues to the solution of the mystery are presented to both the protagonist detective and the reader, and the reader is encouraged to try and solve the mystery before the detective does.
Solving the mystery hasn’t been the sole focus, but the investigation—complete with clue-gathering and encouragement of the reader to solve the puzzle—has been prominent enough that I think we can say the logical procedure of solving the puzzle is an important part of the story.
peiratikos.net /archives/2004/09/22/ic-locked-room   (1634 words)

  
 Mystery + Fun = Harry Slothe
Baloney and I satisfy ourselves on that account." And he wheeled himself past the army and into the room where Staf's body still lay in the middle of the floor, all 7'3" of him.
I described the scene: the room was small and sparse.
The final fact, which you have obviously overlooked, is that when a 7'3" man goes to the circus, his stature is bound to arouse the ire of its midget performers.
www.eriepro.com /pages/web/slothe/locked.html   (678 words)

  
 Early Mystery Novels
Gaboriau went on the write his own novels, and became one of the first mystery writers to put the emphasis on the gathering and interpretation of evidence rather than on the sensation of the murder.
Author of The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1907) which is the first mystery in which the person investigating the crime is the murderer.
Mystery Timeline - Introduction to the history of mystery novels.
www.sldirectory.com /libsf/booksf/mystery/early.html   (1642 words)

  
 Grave Matters: Current Features
It was a popular theme of early mysteries, but one of the best practitioners, John Dickson Carr, who also wrote as Carter Dickson, wrote most of his between WWI and WWII.
Generally the gardening lore part of a mystery belongs to the detective who loves plants (China Bayles and her herbs and Nero Wolfe and his orchids, for example).
Authors who specialize in horticultural mysteries include Charlotte MacLeod with her Peter Shandy series and as Alisa Craig writing about the Grub and Stakers, John Sherwood, Kathy Lynn Emerson, Ann Ripley, Nancy Means Wright and Mary Freeman, to name a few.
www.gravematters.com /recentfeatures.html   (2110 words)

  
 Alias Simon Hawkes: Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in New York
In "The Adventure of the Glass Room" Holmes is presented with the first ever "locked room within a locked room" mystery, an ingenious tale that is certain to become a mystery classic.
A "glass room" is erected in a man's parlor prior to a séance, so as to forbid the psychic at the séance any opportunity to introduce trickery into the event.
From her chair she had a view of the entrance to the parlor the entire time and she is prepared to swear that no one entered the room the entire time, from the moment the door was locked by Parish until the time the shots were heard from inside...
www.authorhouse.com /BookStore/ItemDetail~bookid~12829.aspx   (1211 words)

  
 Amazon.ca: The Locked Room: Books: Maj Sjowall,Per Wahloo   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
The Locked Room is somewhat unique to the series, in that the authors frequently shift their focus to the minor characters and criminals, in omniscient narrator style, giving the reader more perspective than is usual.
Beck, who recently returned to the force after recovering from a shooting, is assigned the locked room case and we see him trying to fit the pieces together of a seemingly impossible crime to solve.
The Locked Room by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo is not quite as strong as their wonderful The Laughing Policeman but will be a delight to any of their fans.
www.amazon.ca /Locked-Room-Maj-Sjowall/dp/0679742220   (1269 words)

  
 locked rooms
Inside the room, I spoke to the eleven people in Italian and convinced them to stay in the room until someone broke in from the outside.
After we had been in the room for about an hour and a half, the audience in the main gallery removed the outer panel and smashed the inner panel to gain access to the room.
The room was left untouched for the remainder of the show.
www.alamut.com /notebooks/l/lockedRooms.html   (896 words)

  
 Crippen & Landru Books: The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant by C. Daly King
The cases solved by Trevis Tarrant, during the early 1930's, assisted by his manservant (who is in actuality a Japanese spy) include locked rooms, headless corpses, a vanishing harp, and newly built but haunted house, and other bizarre events.
Of all the forms of the mystery that flourished during the Golden Age of the 1930s, the one which still retains its power is the combination of the whodunit and howdunit, the Locked Room and/or Impossible Crime story.
According to Edward Hoch’s intriguing introduction, C. Daly King (1985—1963) was, with G. Chesterton and Carter Dickson, one of the masters of the “locked room” mystery.
www.crippenlandru.com /books.asp?ID=76   (1057 words)

  
 Millsaps College :: Core Curriculum   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
Seemingly the ultimate "locked-room mystery," the scenery concludes with five solitary sheets of paper situated in front of each person, an apparent signal for the task ahead, addressed to each by name; each and every one presented the same message: Get out if you can.
Here we have it, the studious historian, peering beady-eyed over the shoulder of the sophisticated scientist, watching him work out problems and equations, hoping that he--and he alone--solves the posed dilemma, all the while the historian jotting down all in her precious historical record.
Returning to the "locked-room" metaphor, common knowledge appears to imply the idea that each discipline is confined to a sort of locked room.
www.millsaps.edu /corecurr/laney/laneyaward-hillman.shtml   (1584 words)

  
 Locked-Room Murders   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
A popular sub-genre in mystery fiction, especially during the Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s, is the so-called locked-room murder, which can be defined as any crime committed in such a way that it seems to be impossible to determine how it was done.
Although the lecture is interrupted in the story by new turns in the plot, it pretty much covers all of the methods by which a murder can be committed in a room in which the sole occupant seems to have been the victim.
A couple of ingenious key-manipulation locked-room mysteries are Ellery Queen's Chinese Orange Mystery and Edgar Wallace's Clue of the New Pin.
www.mysterylist.com /lockedrm.htm   (1509 words)

  
 Box, short story by Erik Smetana, Web Mystery Magazine, Spring 2005
The only color in the room was from the grotesque splatter of bodily fluid, all too reminiscent of a Pollack painting, and a pool of coagulated blood that encompassed the body of the victim, the late homeowner.
However on this night, the blindingly white room with the ten inch steel door and padded walls only further complicated the details of an already mind-boggling homicide.
The man on the couch sat there mumbling, while the flicker of a small television on the floor in the corner of the room served as the only means of luminescence in the entire dwelling.
lifeloom.com /II4SmetanaBox.htm   (917 words)

  
 Eliminating the Impossible
Imagine a “locked room mystery,” in which something occurs in a room or a locale, access to which seems to have been impossible.
The mental act that solved the mystery reproduced the original act: In the mental process that solved the mystery, passage in and out of the locked room occurred through a deduction, allowing one to see what was really there inside the walls of the mystery, although hidden until that moment.
When it was closely examined, the hidden “impersonator” could be found, and the method he or she used to pass in and out of the room, by switching identifying characteristics, could be deduced and then revealed to all.
www.spirithistory.com /shrlck.html   (1749 words)

  
 John Dickson Carr Locked Room Puzzle Mystery Author   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
A world where bodies are found alone in hermetically sealed rooms, or in houses surrounded by unmarked snow or sand; where damsels walk into country houses and vanish like smoke; where a businessman can dive into a swimming pool and disappear; where rooms, buildings, streets, even whole centuries seem to vanish.
John Dickson Carr, the master of the locked room novel and one of the greatest Golden Age detective novelists, was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania in 1906.
Though Carr was not the first in the field with historical mysteries, it was his success (as Anthony Boucher pointed out) that paved the way for other writers.
www.mysterynet.com /books/testimony/carr.shtml   (855 words)

  
 THE MYSTERY READER New Faces Interview Mary Reed and Eric Mayer
Thus it is not perhaps surprising that I remain devoted to the body in the library and locked room sub genres, although I also love historical mysteries.
The first novel completed was a funny (we hoped) mystery, of the body in the library and eccentric suspects mode, but set out in the woods at an orienteering meet.
I also like mysteries featuring a strong puzzle aspect, like those of Agatha Christie and any locked room mystery, even though, I admit it, I have yet to completely figure out a mystery before the author reveals all.
www.themysteryreader.com /nf-reed.html   (2171 words)

  
 Mystery Readers Journal: Cross-Genre Mysteries - Volume 15, No. 1
Mystery, even in its most elemental form, i.e., the locked room mystery, is not entirely confined to the mechanics of the puzzle.
For a film director, those extrinsic influences are compounded with the options of lighting, music, color, special effects, camera angles, editing, components that abet the transformation of a "pure" mystery into a mystery that is crossbred with fantasy, romance, supernatural, suspense, history.
The whole series was made up of mystery novels set in the old west, all of them involving crimes solved by employees of a detective agency specializing in railroad crimes.
www.mysteryreaders.org /Issues/CrossGenre.html   (2992 words)

  
 Amazon.fr : The Locked Room: The Story of a Crime: Livres en anglais: Maj Sjowall,Sjowall,Per Wahloo   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
A corpse is found shot through the heart in a room locked from within--no firearm in sight.
Only by finding our what happened in the locked room can Beck--haunted by a near-fatal bullet wound and the demise of a soulless marriage--escape from an airtight prison of his own.
Exploring the ramifications of egotism and intellect, luck and accident, and set against the backdrop of the inspired deductions and monstrous errors of Martin Beck and the Stockholm Homicide Squad, this tour de force of detection bears the unmistakable substance and gravity of real life.
www.amazon.fr /Locked-Room-Story-Crime/dp/0679742220   (392 words)

  
 Crippen & Landru Books: A Killing Climate: The Collected Mystery Stories by Eric Wright
Wright is a celebrated Canadian mystery writer, creator of the Charlie Salter series and winner of four top awards from the Crime Writers of Canada.
At a time when mystery writing is dominated by police procedurals and tough-guy suspense tales, Wright offers puzzles that showcase character, in the Poe tradition of the unreliable narrator; that resurrect intellectual exercises, such as the locked-room puzzle; and that provide a satisfying update on the old-fashioned O'Henry twist.
And Wright provides a deft mix of atmosphere and character, as in "Licensed Guide," in which a fishing camp at the end of August is ripe for murder, and "The Duke," in which a camp cook's ordered world is challenged by a tormentor.
www.crippenlandru.com /books.asp?ID=77   (562 words)

  
 Ruse #21 Review - Silver Bullet Comics
Last issue of Ruse ended with a locked room mystery, but new readers do not need to know that since the murder which series detective Simon Archard witnessed gets a brief recap that mingles with his characterization.
With Simon locked away in Partington's House of Corrections, it's now up to Emma Bishop to solve the mystery and free Simon from the misery.
When watching Jeremy Brett's early Sherlock Holmes mysteries there's a certain point in which the violin music crescendos and the static display on the television becomes a staccato of scenes in which Holmes re-enacts or susses out the culprit.
www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com /reviews/10574358263711.htm   (403 words)

  
 Shuddersome Shorts -- Locked Room Horror
The door had been locked, no one had been seen entering the office at the estimated time of his death, there was no murder weapon, no clues left at the murder site, but his body had been torn apart anyway.
He guided me towards a thick wooden door, through which we arrived in the room where the cell was located.
Locked Room Horror is copyright 1999 by J. Vandersteen.
www.pulpanddagger.com /pulpmag/dark/locked.html   (3792 words)

  
 First Chapters   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-03)
When a videotape mysteriously appears on Adams's doorstep, it appears that the killer is playing with him and his partner.
Horace Masters, a rotund, retired mathematician, puts his intellect to the test as he tries to explain how someone could be poisoned inside a room locked from the inside.
The evidence is clear that their client is guilty; he was found in a securely locked, one-room crack house next to the dead body of a drug dealer.
members.aol.com /PhilM4/page5.html   (600 words)

  
 AskMen.com - Locked-Room Mystery movies
The world of Hollywood murder mysteries is a strange place populated by sleuths, bloody corpses and a disproportionately high number of homicidal butlers (kinda like Tinseltown itself).
This was supposed to be a spoof of the "whodunit" genre, but ended up being one of the best of the lot.
A postman dies on the operating room table and the attending nurse blurts out that the man that murdered him is dead, too.
www.askmen.com /toys/dvd_picks/25_dvd_pick.html   (882 words)

  
 Golden Age Mysteries - The Mysteries of Winterthurn
The first of the stories is purportedly a locked room mystery.
It was a locked room mystery all right (can't remember the details - I think it was about the death of child).
I was unable to find out how the locked room gimmickry was done, nor could I determine how the detective arrived at his conclusion.
www.jdcarr.com /forum/showthread.php?t=2449   (191 words)

  
 Peiratikos » Archives » 2004 » September
The lure of finally solving the Lisa mystery outweighs Matt’s sense of responsibility to his fianc????e and his employer—he cancels his plane ticket, calls ahead to China claiming he’s sick and will be a few days late, and soon is hanging out at Luke’s apartment and applying his amateur sleuthing skills to track down Lisa.
She was at the restaurant the other day, she did run out and break her shoe, she did have the hotel room Matt broke into, the compact is hers—but she’s not the right Lisa.
The answer to the mystery of Lisa’s disappearance is a case of mundane romantic obsession and manipulation, but the movie amplifies and skews it all until it takes on frightening proportions.
peiratikos.net /archives/2004/09   (5466 words)

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