Classic Locked Room Mysteries

by David Stuart Davies

A fascinating collection of ingenious mysteries which all pose the question 'howdunnit?' - 'how was the crime done?' Featuring well-known sleuths from Sherlock Holmes to Father Brown, as well as the less familiar, including Jacques Futrelle's Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, in each story the reader is invited to play detective and is presented with a challenge: can you solve the mystery before the solution is revealed?

Such stories reached their height of popularity in the Victorian and Edwardian eras; this collection, edited and introduced by David Stuart Davies, brings together stories from such masters of the genre as Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins and G. K. Chesterton.


Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautifully bound gift editions of much loved classic titles. Bound in real cloth, printed on high quality paper, and featuring ribbon markers and gilt edges, Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories, Fiction, Crime, Classics

398 pages, Hardcover

First published May 10, 2016

About the author

David Stuart Davies was a British writer. He worked as a teacher of English before becoming a full-time editor, writer, and playwright. Davies wrote extensively about Sherlock Holmes, both fiction and non-fiction. He was the editor of Red Herrings, the monthly in-house publication of the Crime Writers' Association, and a member of The Baker Street Irregulars and the Detection Club.

Reviews

[David Kilner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary:
This is a collection of fifteen short stories in the tradition of the ‘Locked Room’ mystery - a murder (or other crime) has been committed but the victim is in a locked room (or similar) with no obvious way for the villain to have escaped. With the exception of the story by the Editor, they were all published prior to 1934, with the earliest dating to 1842.
The stories are:
- R. Austin Freeman The Aluminium Dagger (1910)
- Edgar Allan Poe The Murder in the Rue Morgue (1842)
- Jacques Futrelle The Problem of Cell 13 (1905)
- Lord Dunsany The Two Bottles of Relish (1934)
- Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace The Tea Leaf (1925)
- Frank Howel Evans The Mystery of the Taxi Cab (1922)
- Wilkie Collins A Terribly Strange Bed (1852)
- William Hope Hodgson The Thing Invisible (1910)
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventure of the Retired Colourman (1926)
- David Stuart Davies The Curzon Street Conundrum (2014)
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich Out of His Head (1862)
- Melville Davisson Post The Doomdorf Mystery (1914)
- C.N. & A.M Williamson The Adventure of the Jacobean House (1907)
- G.K Chesterton The Invisible Man (1911)
- Jacques Futrelle The Motor Boat (1906)

Overall:
I enjoyed this little collection of short stories, published by Pan Macmillan in 2016. Some of them stretch the boundaries of the Locked Room Mystery but all are enjoyable. The writing is variable but quality shines through - especially in the stories by Wilkie Collins and G.K. Chesterton.

Of the fifteen stories, the ones I enjoyed the most were by Collins, Chesterton, Hodgson, Davies and the Williamsons (a husband and wife team).

Perhaps I've read too much crime fiction, but in most cases I was able to work out what was going on, at least at the big picture level.

The collection spans the most common solutions to the Locked Room Mysteries:
-The person was injured outside the room, managed to get inside then shut themselves in and died eg after they were stabbed, shot or poisoned
-The murder weapon was fired or projected from outside the room and entered through a window eg a knife or poisoned dart; or was a poison gas
-There was a mechanical device in the room which either deliberately or accidentally discharged and caused the death eg a knife in a spring-loaded device triggered by getting too close; or the sun hitting the breech of an old-fashioned gun, causing it fire and kill someone; or a mechanical device operated from outside the room
- The killer was not human eg an animal
- The murderer had outside assistance to escape
- It was suicide not murder - sometimes made to look like murder
- The murderer had abilities to get inside a room which no ordinary person would possess
- Except for the key investigator (eg Father Brown), everybody missed something critical to the story - in the Father Brown case, a sociological explanation - a mentally invisible man

www.davidkilner.com

[Humberto Ballesteros · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather irregular collection, but very fun to read nonetheless. I found the stories of lesser quality to be good examples of the genre, despite their shortcomings. As to my favorites, besides enjoying rereading Poe, I particularly liked the pieces by Dunsany and Collins; and one always appreciates a good old Father Brown mystery.

[Christina Nielsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of different locked room mysteries, and a good selection of different authors. Solid read.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable, if highly uneven, collection of locked-room mysteries. Davies picks some obvious ones, like Poe, along with some real humdingers by now completely forgotten authors. Best read interstitially, rather than all the way through, as some of the stories can get a little repetitive.

[Paul Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Four stars for the eclectic selction and the other star because the book was so nicely produced. A lovely embossed cloth cover beneath the dust jacket, a ribbon to mark your page, go quality gold edged paper but unfortunately one or two printing errors (which I am sure will be picked up on the next edition). Short stories in small volumes are ideal to read whilst on the move (and more pleasurable to handle than a Kindle).

[Mike Futcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Locked-room' mystery stories are fundamentally flawed, in that they require considerable suspension of disbelief just to accept their improbable scenarios, let alone their often even-more-improbable solutions, but once you accept all of this they become a lot of fun. This means that even though the quality of the stories in Classic Locked-Room Mysteries vary, the book itself is consistently entertaining.

After a great introduction from David Stuart Davies, who compiled this 2016 collection, which summarises an interesting tale from Herodotus and provides useful colour on the various authors included in the volume, Classic Locked-Room Mysteries actually begins unpromisingly, with the unspectacular 'The Aluminium Dagger'. It then proceeds to Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' which, although it deserves immense respect for practically inventing the detective genre and its formula, has a solution which is pretty silly to modern readers.

Fortunately, the book then proceeds to a quintessential 'locked-room' story in Jacques Futrelle's 'The Problem of Cell 13', complete with deductions, conundrums and outlandish solutions. The next story is a real and surprising gem, Lord Dunsany's 'The Two Bottles of Relish'. I won't spoil its rewards, but it unfolds fantastically and its success whets the appetite for the rest of the book. With this goodwill built up, Jepson & Eustace's 'The Tea Leaf' proves entertaining and has one of the best solutions of the collection. Things then dip slightly with Howel Evans' 'The Mystery of the Taxi-Cab'. Wilkie Collins' 'A Terribly Strange Bed' is a better story for its atmosphere than for any ingenuity, as is Hodgson's 'The Thing Invisible'.

A Sherlock Holmes story is always welcome in any company, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventure of the Retired Colourman' is effortlessly rewarding even if its not Holmes at his absolute best. David Stuart Davies then uses his editorial remit to insert his own story, 'The Curzon Street Conundrum'. This inevitably feels more modern than the other (classic) stories, even if it is set in the same period. But though it seems out of place, it doesn't feel inferior by any means.

The best is now past, and the rest of the book is just for the reader to indulge in the concept of the locked-room. Aldrich's 'Out of His Head' is curious, and Melville Davisson Post's 'The Doomdorf Mystery' is the best of this late sequence of stories. The American West setting of 'Doomdorf' is a nice change of pace from the British parlour-room atmosphere of most of the other selections, and its solution to the locked-room murder as delightfully far-fetched as any of the others.

The Williamsons' 'The Adventure of the Jacobean House' passed me by, unfortunately, though G. K. Chesterton's Father Brown story 'The Invisible Man' redeemed this with some quality writing. That said, Chesterton's solution seemed the most unlikely of the lot. The collection ends with the return of Jacques Futrelle, the only author included twice. 'The Motor Boat' isn't a locked-room story, making it an unusual inclusion, but it's a fun mystery regardless.

All told, Classic Locked-Room Mysteries does exactly what it says on the tin. There's just something satisfying about stories like this; figuring out how someone was murdered in a room locked from the inside, or escaped from a cell. The stories are, by-and-large, well-chosen and sequenced well and the book will entertain any willing reader throughout.

[Caleb Dagenhart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well-produced collection with a decent variety of stories. Close to four stars, but in the end, I'm going with three.

Some of the stories were a bit far-fetched, but there was quite a good variety of takes on the "dead body in a locked room" situation popular in the Victorian / Edwardian eras. Although the execution could've been better, I love the premise behind "The Invisible Man" by G. K. Chesterton. Personally, I was a bit annoyed by the writing and flat character of "The Thinking Machine" stories, although there were only two in this collection of fifteen stories.

[ALbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five Stars to David Stuart Davies who selected a nice and easy collection of short closed room mysteries that share a common vision but are heterogeneous. The mystery is not always a murder, and the room is not always a simple room, but logic is always the key to the solution!
As The Thinking Machine would say: "Logic is inevitable". Highly recommended.

I love the Macmillan Collector's Library!

[crimeanddramabookaholic · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was different, some of the short stories were interesting others difficult to get through. Two or three of the authors I will go and read more of their stories following this.

Overall it was a good read, with some very interesting mysteries that you’ll never guess how the murder happened and others were you can have a good guess.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the format of these little MacMillan books, easy to hold, put in your bag, etc. The fabric bookmark and dust jacket are a nice touch too.

[Marina Guerra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Valeu a pena pelo Father Brown, que eu n conhecia.

[Paulina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me gustó la compilación y fue una buena lectura para conocer varios autores de misterio. Me encantó Lord Dunsany con Two Bottles of Relish y definitivamente The Murders in the Rue Morgue de Poe.

[Betsy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these are frequently anthologized elsewhere, but there were some great discoveries — especially in Cell 13. The volume was great company on a long flight.

[D Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun to read one mystery in between other books.

[Kaiwen Cheang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to go through as shorts. Some language a little challenging. Some interesting solves.

[James Swenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun little collection, though I was disappointed that two of the mysteries had essentially the same solution. The highlight is the macabre "The Two Bottles of Relish" by Lord Dunsany.

[Cathy]

Lovely little pocket sized book, beautiful edition, with short stories exactly as you’d expect from the title.