Locked Room Mysteries: Background information when reading Eight Perfect Murders

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

Eight Perfect Murders

by Peter Swanson

Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson X
Eight Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson
  • Critics' Opinion:

    Readers' Opinion:

     Not Yet Rated
  • First Published:
    Mar 2020, 288 pages

    Paperback:
    Jan 2021, 288 pages

    Genres

  • Rate this book


Book Reviewed by:
Jordan Lynch
Buy This Book

About this Book

Locked Room Mysteries

This article relates to Eight Perfect Murders

Print Review

Door with key in lockIn Eight Perfect Murders, bookseller Malcolm Kershaw is contacted by the FBI regarding his list of favorite mystery novels with seemingly unsolvable murders. The oldest book on Malcolm's list is The Red House Mystery, written in 1922 by A.A. Milne (of Winnie-the-Pooh fame). Milne's book is a locked room mystery, also known as an impossible crime mystery, featuring a man who is murdered in a literal locked room, though the genre extends to more expansive locations as well, such as the island in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. What all books in the genre have in common is that the crime seems impossible, and thus equally impossible to solve, although, of course, it is solved in the end. Locked room mysteries are less about the "who" of the crime and more about the "how." If the person was alone in a locked room, how could they have been murdered? If the object was kept safe in a locked room with only one key, how could it have been stolen? If everyone trapped on the island has a solid alibi, who could the killer be?

This trope has been popular in the mystery genre for more than a century. Edgar Allen Poe is often regarded as the first to have written a locked room mystery, with his 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which features a woman murdered in her locked apartment and shoved into the chimney. However, detective novelist John Dickson Carr is considered the master of this subgenre. In 1981, honored mystery writer Edward D. Hoch invited 17 well-known authors and reviewers of detective fiction to vote on the best locked room mystery for the introduction of a new anthology. Carr's 1935 novel The Three Coffins (published in the UK as The Hollow Man) was chosen as number one. Interestingly, Carr himself had once said that he considered French author Gaston Leroux's The Mystery of the Yellow Room to be the best example of this type of mystery, but Leroux's work came in third in the 1981 rankings.

Other popular examples from the 19th and 20th centuries include Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventure of the Speckled Band (1892), Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express (1934) and her 1939 classic, And Then There Were None. Also, The King is Dead (1952) by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee (published under the pseudonym Ellery Queen). Incidentally, And Then There Were None was the only pre-21st century title to make it onto one of BookBrowse's All-Time Top 10 Book Club lists, coming in at #9 in the Mysteries and Thrillers category.

The solutions to many older locked room mysteries seem quite far-fetched today, but there are a number of newer titles that have introduced more complex solutions to contemporary audiences. These include The Woman in Cabin 10 and In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware, The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley, Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane, Guess Who by Chris McGeorge, and In the Morning I'll Be Gone by Adrian McKinty. Translations of many foreign locked room mysteries have also become available in recent years, introducing books such as The Tokyo Zodiac Murders by Soji Shamada and Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to English audiences. Locked room mysteries have also appeared on the screen. Jonathan Lynn's Clue (1985) and Rian Johnson's Knives Out (2019) both feature a locked house mystery, while a number of detective and crime television shows have featured locked room episodes, including BBC's Sherlock, Citytv's Murdoch Mysteries, and USA Network's Monk. This style of mystery also provided the premise for CBS's Harper's Island, which, much like And Then There Were None, featured a group of guests on an island being murdered one by one.

The locked room construct has maintained its popularity over the past century and a half largely due to the seemingly impossible nature of the crimes. Although the solutions have grown more sophisticated as society has advanced and new crime-solving techniques have been developed, at their heart, these mysteries still speak to the human desire for knowledge and the frustration of leaving things unknown.

Filed under Reading Lists

Article by Jordan Lynch

This "beyond the book article" relates to Eight Perfect Murders. It originally ran in March 2020 and has been updated for the January 2021 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access become a member today.
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Become a Member

Join BookBrowse today to start discovering exceptional books!

Find out more


Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: A Mystery of Mysteries
    A Mystery of Mysteries
    by Mark Dawidziak
    Edgar Allan Poe biographers have an advantage over other writers because they don't have to come up ...
  • Book Jacket: Moonrise Over New Jessup
    Moonrise Over New Jessup
    by Jamila Minnicks
    Jamila Minnicks' debut novel Moonrise Over New Jessup received the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially...
  • Book Jacket
    The Magician's Daughter
    by H.G. Parry
    "Magic isn't there to be hoarded like dragon's treasure. Magic is kind. It comes into ...
  • Book Jacket: The Great Displacement
    The Great Displacement
    by Jake Bittle
    On August 4, 2021, California's largest single wildfire to date torched through the small mountain ...

Book Club Discussion

Book Jacket
The Nurse's Secret
by Amanda Skenandore
A fascinating historical novel based on the little-known story of America's first nursing school.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Once We Were Home
    by Jennifer Rosner

    From the author of The Yellow Bird Sings, a novel based on the true stories of children stolen in the wake of World War II.

  • Book Jacket

    The God of Endings
    by Jacqueline Holland

    A suspenseful debut that weaves a story of love, history and myth through the eyes of one immortal woman.

Who Said...

It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its ...

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

R Peter T P P

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.