As If by Magic: Locked Room Mysteries and Other Miraculous Crimes

by Martin Edwards (Editor)

A young woman vanishes without a trace from a cottage watched from all sides. Five butlers, all linked to impossible murders, face their own improbable doom at the annual club dinner. How was a bank-cashier, enjoying the radio at home alone, felled by a bullet fired 222 years prior?

Today, ‘locked room mystery’ is too often used as shorthand for any kind of closed-circle detective story, but this collection of classic short mysteries is the real deal, where the question is not simply whodunit?, but howdunit? And for puzzle-obsessives and those who love to see how the greatest deceptions are unraveled, As If by Magic offers some of the most tantalising criminal conundrums ever devised.

Gathering sixteen perplexing problems from a troupe of writers including obscure rediscoveries and legends of the Golden Age of Crime such as John Dickson Carr, Christianna Brand and Julian Symons, Martin Edwards sets the stage for one of the most entertaining anthologies of impossible and locked room mysteries in the history of the genre.

Genres: Short Stories, Mystery

343 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 4, 2025

About the author

Martin Edwards has been described by Richard Osman as ‘a true master of British crime writing.’ He has published twenty-three novels, which include the eight Lake District Mysteries, one of which was shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize for best crime novel of the year and four books featuring Rachel Savernake, including the Dagger-nominated Gallows Court and Blackstone Fell, while Gallows Court and Sepulchre Street were shortlisted for the eDunnit award for best crime novel of the year. He is also the author of two multi-award-winning histories of crime fiction, The Life of Crime and The Golden Age of Murder. He has received three Daggers from the Crime Writers’ Association and two Edgars from the Mystery Writers of America and has also been nominated three times for Gold Daggers. In addition to the CWA Diamond Dagger (the highest honour in UK crime writing) he has received four other lifetime achievement awards: for his fiction, short fiction, non-fiction, and scholarship. He is consultant to the British Library’s Crime Classics, a former Chair of the CWA, and since 2015 has been President of the Detection Club.

Reviews

[Shona Lidgey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous collection of diverse and brilliant short stories. Full of funny characters and intrigue.

[thearcher89 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Normally, I don't read short stories but this one came highly recommended. Yet I think there are 3 stories in here that are good.

Two stories by John Dickson Carr are quite superb -- both very macabre if you stop to think about them. The other one that stood out was Christianna Brand's Murder Game. Even in a short story form, she managed to pack in her signature multiple solutions.

Other ones are meh.

[Kim Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some very good 'locked room' and 'closed circle' mysteries in this collection, most of them from the golden age of detective fiction.