The locked room mystery is a sub-genre of detective fiction in which a crime—almost always murder—is committed under apparently impossible circumstances. The crime in question typically involves a crime scene that no intruder could have entered or left, e.g., a locked room. Following other conventions of classic detective fiction, the reader is normally presented with the puzzle and all of the clues, and is encouraged to solve the mystery before the solution is revealed in a dramatic climax.
To investigators of the crime, the prima facie impression almost invariably is that the perpetrator has vanished into thin air. The need for a rational explanation for the crime is what drives the protagonist to look beyond these appearances and solve the puzzle.
Read more about Locked Room Mystery: History of The Genre, Examples, Authors and Works, Radio, Television and Film, Pulp Magazines, Comic Books/graphic Novels, True Crimes
Famous quotes containing the words locked room, locked, room and/or mystery:
“However, there is a locked room up there
with an iron door that can’t be opened.
It has all your bad dreams in it.
It is hell.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“It is reported here that the King of Prussia has gone mad and has been locked up. There would be nothing bad about that: at least that might of his would no longer be a menace, and you could breathe freely for a while. I much prefer madmen who are locked up to those who are not.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
“There is a mystery that floats between
The tourist and the town. Imagination
Estranges it from her. She need not suffer
Or die here. It is none of her affair,
Its calm heroic vistas make no claim.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)