And Throw Away the Key

Modern readers are often dismissive of locked-room mysteries, thinking them hopelessly old-fashioned. Yet, as John Pugmire and Steve Lewis point out in an excellent assessment at the Mystery*File site, these tales have not only enjoyed a robust history but continue to be written and relished today.

Pugmire and Lewis’ “Locked Room Library”--posted here--melds two principal lists: one, the works chosen by 17 authors and critics, who in 1981 were asked by American short-story writer Edward D. Hoch (then putting together the anthology All But Impossible!) to rank what they thought were the top 10 “impossible crime” novels (though their list actually features 15 titles); and two, an unranked roster assembled earlier this year and featuring 99 books (all of which had to be available in French translation), selected by a board of nine locked-room mystery experts, including Pugmire, and headed by Gallic anthologist Roland Lacourbe. (In addition, there’s a roster of 14 titles that received at least four votes from members of Lacourbe’s panel, but have not yet been translated into French.) Pugmire, the English translator of Paul Halter (“the French writer who specializes in the genre”), provides in his introduction a valuable history of the locked-room whodunit--or, rather, “howdunit.”

If you’re a longtime crime-fiction enthusiast, there are probably a number of books here that you’ve already read (in my case, those include Ellery Queen’s The Chinese Orange Mystery, John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins, Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room, Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, Peter Lovesey’s Bloodhounds, Leo Bruce’s Case for Three Detectives, Bill Pronzini’s Hoodwink, Paul Harding’s The Nightingale Gallery, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None), but perhaps many more that you haven’t read. Japanese writer Soji Shimada’s The Tokyo Zodiac Murders is new to me, for instance.

This seems like a good opportunity to ... well, go lock yourself in a room and catch up. Again, Pugmire and Lewis’ “Locked Room Library” can be found here.

READ MORE: “‘Locked-Room’ Mysteries and Other Impossible Crimes,” by Grobius Shortling.