The Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

In this definitive collection, Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler selects a multifarious mix from across the entire history of the locked room story, which should form the cornerstone of any crime reader's library.Virtually all of the great writers of detective fiction have produced masterpieces in this genre, including Agatha Christie, Edgar Allan Poe, Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, G.K. Chesterton, John Dickson Carr, Dashiell Hammett, Ngaio Marsh and Stephen King. The purest kind of detective story involves a crime solved by observation and deduction, rather than luck, coincidence or confession. The supreme form of detection involves the explanation of an impossible crime, whether the sort of vanishing act that would make Houdini proud, a murder that leaves no visible trace, or the most unlikely villain imaginable. 70 stories handpicked by Otto Penzle

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Crime

1749 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 28, 2014

About the author

Otto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.

Otto Penzler founded The Mysteriour Press in 1975 and was the publisher of The Armchair Detective, the Edgar-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction, for seventeen years.

Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977, and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994, and the Raven--the group's highest non-writing award--in 2003.

Reviews

[Roisin Shanahan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an enormous book at over 1,400 pages with "short" stories from both popular authors and a few obscure ones. They are split up into categories like i) locked room ii) poison iii) gun etc Because of both the length and how many stories it contains I used to dip in and out of the book when I had nothing else to read. I was stalled at 50% for a few months before I decided now was the time to start chipping away at it again.
Some stories I liked, others were a struggle to read. The length of some stories was over 50 pages which to me is a novella and not a short story. Still worth a read however if you have time on your hands.

[Thomas Radigan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this as a gift. With a large variety of stories and authors, some of them are inevitably better than others, and the stories do reflect the time periods they were written in. Also you get brief biographies of each of the authors, and you find out surprising things about some of them, such as P. G. Wodehouse, whose stories were not always cutesy. Definitely give to someone you like, or buy for yourself.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazingly good value as there are 68 "impossible" crime stories contained in this volume, with brief biographical and bibliographical notes.

Many of the stories and a number of the authors were new to me. There is the expected range of quality and length and it is certainly a book to be dipped-into rather than read all through.

[Johanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm a patchy but huge collection. Some ancient out of copyright potboilers that were just padding and some good stories. Ok as a time filler if you want an easy dip in and out read. I'd recommend against reading in a run as there is only so much you can do with a locked room set up and so they become predictable .....

[Shirley Rougely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not really a review, but more for just stating the reason why I bought/read the book: I originally bought this on Amazon back in 2015, after reading about the famous locked-room mystery death of Isidore Fink, and subsequently started searching for books about locked-room mysteries. I own a physical copy of the book, but the kindle version was the only version I could find here.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK

I quite liked some of the short stories but there are too many to be read as a series. Some are worth reading but most are artificially mysterious.

[Alexandria Blaelock · Rating 4 out of 5]

As you’d expect, some good stories, and some less good.

[Patrick O'Callaghan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moderately interesting but frankly not great.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

The murders in the Rue Morgue / Edgar Allan Poe --3
The problem of Cell 13 / Jacques Futrelle --3
A terribly strange bed / Wilkie Collins --4
The two bottles of relish / Lord Dunsany --3
The invisible man / G. K. Chesterton --3
The Doomdorf mystery / Melville Davisson Post --3
The adventure of the speckled band / Arthur Conan Doyle--4
The wrong problem / John Dickson Carr --2
The thing invisible / William Hope Hodgson --2
Department of impossible crimes / James Yaffe --
The aluminium dagger / R. Austin Freeman --2
The crewel needle / Gerald Kersh --
The doctor's case / Stephen King --
A knife between brothers / Manly Wade Wellman --3
The glass gravestone / Joseph Commings --2
The tea leaf / Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace --3
The flung-back lid / Peter Godfrey --3
The crooked picture / John Lutz --
*Blind man's hood / Carter Dickson--
The man from nowhere / Edward D. Hoch --
*The laughing butcher / Fredric Brown --
The sands of thyme / Michael Innes --
The flying death / Samuel Hopkins Adams --3
The flying corpse / A. E. Martin --2
The flying hat / Vincent Cornier--1
The day the children vanished / Hugh Pentecost --4
*The twelfth statue / Stanley Ellin --
*All at once, no Alice / William Irish --
Beware of the trains / Edmund Crispin --3
The locked bathroom / H. R. F. Keating --2
Mike, Alec, and Rufus / Dashiell Hammett --
*The episode of the Torment IV / C. Daly King --
Greaves' disappearance / Julian Hawthorne --
The house of haunts / Ellery Queen --
The monkey trick / J. E. Gurdon --
The ordinary hairpins / E. C. Bentley --3
The phantom motor / Jacques Futrelle --2
The theft of the Bermuda penny / Edward D. Hoch --
Room number 23 / Judson Philips--3
The burglar who smelled smoke / Lynne Wood Block & Lawrence Block --
The Kestar diamond case / Augustus Muir --
The odour of sanctity / Kate Ellis --3
The problem of the old oak tree / Edward D. Hoch --
The invisible weapon / Nicholas Olde --3
The confession of Rosa Vitelli / Ray Cummings --
The locked room to end locked rooms / Stephen Barr--2
Nothing is impossible / Clayton Rawson --3
*Where have you gone, Sam Spade? / Bill Pronzini --
In a telephone cabinet / G. D. H. Cole & M. I. Cole --3
Death out of thin air / Stuart Towne (aka Clayton Rawson)--
The dream / Agatha Christie --3
The border-line case / Margery Allingham --3
*The Bradmoor murder / Melville Davisson Post --
The man who like toys / Leslie Charteris --
The Ashcomb Poor case / Hulbert Footner --3
The little house at Croix-Rousse / Georges Simenon--2
The bird in the hand / Erle Stanley Gardner --
The Gulverbury diamonds / David Durham --
The fifth tube / Frederick Irving Anderson --2
*The strange case of Steinkelwintz / Mackinlay Kantor --
*Arsene Lupin in prison / Maurice Leblanc --
*The mystery of the strong room / L. T Meade & Robert Eustace --
No way out / Dennis Lynds --
*The episode of the codex curse / C. Daly King --
The poisoned Dow '08 / Dorothy L. Sayers --2
A traveller's tale / Margaret Frazer --
Death at the Excelsior / P. G. Wodehouse--2
Waiting for Godstow / Martin Edwards--3

[Sunni]

Wondering why I haven't "finished" this gem. It is because I dole the tales out like M&Ms

[Deirdre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent stories here, many different ways to use a locked room in a mystery, mostly murder, lots of variety. Still best read in bits cause some seemed to almost repeat.

[Euan Pollock]

Fantastic collection, and really loved the short intros to each story. Great value for money as well, there are plenty of stories in here by the very best authors. Looking forward to reading more of them.