A New Locked-Room Anthology!

I'm sure you remember my epic, two-part series, from 2008, about my love for locked-room mysteries: Part One, Part Two. Well then, I'm sure you can imagine my delight at learning of the publication of Otto Penlzer's new anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries.

Penzler has a short essay up over at HuffPo announcing the new book. He writes:

I don't care how old we get -- as long as we retain a sense of wonder, we'll stay young and live a happier life than those too-cool-for-school cynics who have a weary, ho-hum, is-that-all-there-is response to magic shows, fireworks, and locked-room mysteries.

After a half-century of reading more mystery, crime, and suspense fiction than normal people, and being blessed to have a career in this delicious literary niche as an editor, publisher, bookseller, reviewer, author, and anthologist, I maintain that no sub-genre is as difficult to produce as a locked room mystery.

A lifetime of reading helped produce my new book, The Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries, since I'd hunted down short stories of this type ever since I learned that such things exist.

Almost all the best impossible crime stories were written during the Golden Age of detective fiction, those two decades between the world wars, and, sadly, almost no one produces them nowadays. Of course not. They are as difficult to write as it is for Captain Hook to thread a needle.

I read about 350-400 stories before settling on the final 68 (I was fussier than Goldilocks), which represent almost every kind of scenario for a crime that appears to have no rational solution.

The most standard situation is a hermetically sealed room, doors and windows locked, no secret entrances, closely guarded, yet the intended victim is stabbed, bludgeoned, poisoned, strangled, or shot to death.

But there are other, equally impossible set-ups. A carefully raked tennis court with a bludgeoned corpse at the net, with only his footsteps on the clay. A body that has been stabbed in the middle of a field of undisturbed, newly fallen snow. An empty airplane making a smooth landing. A person who enters a house, never to be seen again.

Of course, I immediately downloaded the book to my Kindle upon reading this. I suspect I will pick up the print copy as well, since it will look good on my bookshelf next to all of the other locked-room mysteries I've acquired. Indeed, a while back I spent a pleasant afternoon at The Mysterious Bookshop, the New York City mystery bookstore founded by Penzler. I arrived in the early afternoon with a long list of obscure locked-room novels, and proceeded, over the next few hours, to add most of them to my collection.

As much as I am looking forward to diving into the anthology, I have long believed that locked-room mysteries work better as novels than as short stories. In a short story you barely have time to establish the impossible situation and then resolve it, making the whole affair come off a bit gimmicky. But I still love the whole genre. This is partly because I love a good yarn, but it is also because I like the whole philosophy behind locked-room mysteries. While all the other characters are losing their heads and going on about the supernatural, the eccentric detective applies some ratiocination and unravels everything by naturalistic means. I like that!

I've only made it as far as the table of contents thus far. There are many familiar titles, but I am pleasantly surprised by how many I don't recognize. The opening section consists of seven absolute classics of the field. Here they are:

• The Problem of Cell 13 by Jacques Futrelle.
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe.
• The Invisible Man by G. K. Chesterton.
• The Adventure of the Speckled Band by Arthur Conan Doyle.
• A Terribly Strange Bed by Wilkie Collins.
• The Doomdorf Mystery by Melville Davisson Post.
• The Two Bottles of Relish by Lord Dunsany.

Only the Lord Dunsany story is new to me. The title is pretty intriguing!

These are all great stories, but some are a bit dated. In particular, the Poe and Doyle stories would nowadays be considered unfair, because of their reliance on animal killers. The Chesterton story, though clever, would be considered unfair, since some of the witnesses gave plainly false testimony.

I have previously discussed “The Problem of Cell 13.” It's basic premise is that The Thinking Machine, which is the nickname for Professor S. F. X. Van Dusen, makes the following bet with some friends of his:

Lock me in any cell in any prison anywhere at any time, wearing only what is necessary, and I'll escape in a week.

The bet is accepted, and The Thinking Machine is whisked away that very night to a local prison. And if you seriously try to tell me you are not interested in reading the rest of the story (readily available online), then I will not believe you.

Penzler notes that the best locked-room stories were written in the Golden Age of detective stories (roughly the 1920s to the 1940s), and frets that no one nowadays seems to be writing good ones. That is partly because of the difficulty of doing anything original in the field. But it is also because of a general lack of imagination afflicting modern mysteries. The flamboyant, fair-play plots and eccentric detectives of yesteryear have mostly given way to somber police procedurals and dreary private investigators.

But I'll complain about that another time. For now I have close to a thousand pages of locked-room goodness to wade through.