Skip to main content
One by One by Ruth Ware
The It Girl by Ruth Ware
The Finalists by David Bell
The Island by Adrian McKinty
Girl Overboard by Sandra Block
Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare
It’s One of Us by JT Ellison

Do you remember when you first read The Speckled Band? The Sherlock short story by Arthur Conan Doyle where a soon-to-be-wed daughter is mysteriously killed in a creepy mansion where no one could possibly have entered her locked room? And then, guess what, ANOTHER soon-to-be-wed daughter has to sleep in the same room? And then … I must’ve been around 11 when I read it, and I completely remember thinking — how could this be? No one could have gotten in there!

The fabulous Sophie Hannah always talks about the key to a wonderful mystery is that it begins with an impossible thing. Something that absolutely under no circumstances could happen — and yet, it does.

And the reader is compelled to read the book to find out what the author has cooked up as the solution.

If you ever want to have a fun discussion with crime fiction authors, get everyone together (in a closed room?), and discuss whether the father  of the locked room mystery is Edgar Allan Poe or John Dickson Carr. Then talk about the immense skill needed to write a locked room, a locked house or a closed-community history. 

Because the key is that there can only be two kinds of solutions: one, that the bad guy is in the house! (Remember? The phone call is coming from inside the house!) Or, the other solution: that the environment is not as locked as you thought. Only two possibilities. And from that, the agile mind of a clever author comes up with the solution to an impossible problem. And we readers love that. 

Countless incarnations of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None have been written, and so many of them are fabulous. (Rachel Howzell Hall! Peter Swanson! Who did I forget?) But the cool part is that it doesn’t have to be a locked room or a locked house. There are many kinds of closed communities where only a finite number of people — we think — could be guilty.

And part of the joy is that we as readers know there’s a trick, a twist, something we haven’t thought of. And just as Sophie Hannah says, we cannot stop turning the pages until we find out.

Every crime fiction reader knows — right? — that part of the fun is being able to say oh! I should have seen that coming! Every one of these books will give you that thrill. Because of course, the locked room of the writers’ mind is the most dangerous place of all.

RELATED POSTS:

One by One by Ruth Ware

One by One by Ruth Ware

Many people say Ruth Ware is the new Agatha Christie, and I have to admit I’m on board. In One by One, an ultra-hip London-based tech start up team plans a weekend in the French Alps. ( The incredible Ruth actually created a cool app that’s used in the novel, as if the book isn’t already amazing!) And then guess what, it snows. But then, guess what. There’s an avalanche. And then guess what? Someone gets killed. And then guess what? Yup. One by one. And then? I’m telling you, you will never guess.

 


The It Girl by Ruth Ware

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

Let’s do another Ruth Ware, because her brand new The It Girl proves the locked room doesn’t have to be an isolated avalanche-surrounded Alpine chalet. It can just be … college. In the truly brilliant The It Girl, someone killed the sensationally sensational April Clarke-Cliveden. And it could only be so many people in her Oxford College circle. When her roommate Hannah fingers one of them and he gets sent to prison forever — well, guess what. What if he didn’t do it? And uh-oh, who did?

 


The Finalists by David Bell

The Finalists by David Bell

The oh-so-talented David Bell literally locks his characters into the house. In The Finalists, six students desperate to win college tuition (and other massively valuable parting gifts) must spend eight hours in a venerable campus mansion with the college administrator and a mysterious potential benefactor. If they leave before the eight hours, they are out of the competition. And then, guess what. One of them is killed. Such a terrifically-written thriller, and so much fun to read!

 


The Island by Adrian McKinty

The Island by Adrian McKinty

Adrian McKinty‘s propulsively terrifying locked room is an island, and his new book is  even called The Island. There’s a perfectly good reason that a truly annoying family takes their truly annoying car on the sinister tiny rickety ferry across to a clearly sinister tiny island off Australia: because the kids demand to see koalas, okay? And the kids are super annoying. But not as super annoying as the inhabitants of said island. And the family can’t get off until … Well, the car is kinda broken and that’s hardly the worst of it. Deliverance with an Australian twist, and an absolute pageturner.

 


Girl Overboard by Sandra Block

Girl Overboard by Sandra Block

Sandra Block (a Tall Poppy Writer) makes her closed room a cruise ship, when a bored teenagers family drags Izzy and her brother on board for a seafaring vacation in this YA thriller, Girl Overboard. They’re headed for to Bermuda, when our heroine Izzy meets a cool new friend. And then, guess what. Jade goes missing. And then guess what, investigators claim Jade fell overboard. But then, guess what. (Cue Jaws music.) Izzy knows better. And on this closed community on the vast and deep Atlantic Ocean, someone is not happy that Izzy is curious. Ooh. Loved it.

 


Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare

Miss Aldridge Regrets by Louise Hare

In Miss Aldridge Regrets, Louise Hare also makes her locked room a ship — the ocean liner The Queen Mary. In 1936, when London-based jazz singer Lena Aldridge is offered a role on Broadway, she boards the Queen Mary and becomes entangled with a fabulously wealthy and fabulously sinister family. And then guess what, someone dies. And then guess what. Oh, you know. And you will love this book. It is Upstairs Downstairs on the Queen Mary with jazz and Cole Porter songs, and how could anything be better than that?

 


It’s One of Us by JT Ellison

It’s One of Us by JT Ellison

And JT Ellison, always fabulous, gives the locked room another incarnation: DNA.  In her upcoming It’s One of Us, only someone with a certain DNA could be the bad guy — a person police insist is Olivia’s husband‘s son. But that’s silly, Olivia and her husband have no children, so the police must be wrong. Then it turns out, her husband does have children, children he doesn’t even know. He doesn’t even know how many of them there are! But that means Olivia is now married to the father of a murderer. And oh, guess what? Well, I’ll never tell.

 


Hank Phillippi Ryan

Hank Phillippi Ryan is the USA Today bestselling author of 14 psychological thrillers, winning the genres most prestigious awards: five Agathas, four Anthonys and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. She is also an on-air investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV, with 37 EMMYs for her groundbreaking journalism. Her current thriller is HER PERFECT LIFE, a cat-and-mouse standalone novel about fame, family and revenge. It received starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly calling it “a superlative thriller.” Her next thriller is THE HOUSE GUEST, coming February 2023. Hank is the host of CRIME TIME on A Mighty Blaze, and co-host of First Chapter Fun and The Back Room.

Leave a Reply