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 and/or mystery:
“Never can the innate power of a work be hidden or locked away. A work of art can be forgotten by time; it can be forbidden and rejected but the elemental will always prevail over the ephemeral.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Don’t you see what’s at stake here? The ultimate aim of all science—to penetrate the unknown. Do you realize we know less about the earth we live on than about the stars and the galaxies of outer space? The greatest mystery is right here, right under our feet.”
—Walter Reisch (1903–1963)