Locked Room Murders and Impossible Crimes
Explore the ultimate locked room mystery reading list, featuring impossible crimes by Agatha Christie, Edward D. Hoch, and more classic whodunits.
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Diagnosis Impossible
by Edward D. Hoch
This collection is set in New England during the 1920's and the 1930's, and features country doctor Sam Hawthorne who specializes in locked room and other impossible crimes. Among the 12 stories is the classic tale of a horse and buggy that enter a covered bridge -- and vanish. Introduction by the author; Sam Hawthorne chronology and bibliography by Marvin Lachman.
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More Things Impossible
by Edward D. Hoch
Nothing is impossible! Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a New England country doctor in the first half of the twentieth century, was constantly faced by murders in locked rooms, impossible disappearances, and other so-called "miracle crimes." More Things Impossible contains fifteen of Dr. Sam's extraordinary cases[.] ... Edward D. Hoch, is a legend of ingenuity in the world of mystery writing. Author of more than 800 short stories, winner of the Edgar Award, former President of the Mystery Writers of America, and contributor to every issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine since 1973, Hoch is one of the great mystery writers of our time. --Publisher description.
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Banner Deadlines
by Joseph Commings
Joseph Commings (1913-1992) created one of the greatest investigators of locked rooms, impossible disappearances and other impossible crimes - the gargantuan, harrumphing Senator Brooks U. Banner. During his long career (Banner first appeared in the pulps in 1947), he investigated such crimes as murder at a seance where everyone is straight-jacketed together and linked by touching feet, a strange spectre causing death in the middle of a lake, a killing in a sealed glass case, and a murder by a sword which must have been wielded by a giant. The most extraordinary story of all is "The X Street Murders," in which the victim is shot in a guarded room and the smoking-gun is delivered, a few seconds later, in a sealed envelope next door.
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The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant
by C. Daly King
"The Most Imaginative Detective Stories of Our Times" So wrote Ellery Queen about The Curious Mr. Tarrant, an extraordinary collection of detective stories by Charles Daly King (1895-1963). 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. With the encouragement of Ellery Queen, King wrote four additional stories about Mr. Tarrant, some of them becoming "curiouser and curiouser." They include the case of a Hollywood star who disappears from a locked suite of rooms, in a house surrounded by detectives, and the murder solved only because of the absence of a fish. These additional stories along with the original eight tales are included in The Complete Curious Mr. Tarrant.
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White Corridor
by Christopher Fowler
For uniquely atmospheric, richly rewarding, and teasingly thrilling mysteries, there's nothing better than the latest adventure of crime fiction's oddest couple, Bryant and May, and London's Peculiar Crimes Unit.
