Catherine Coles
Coles Notes
The locked room whodunit – a mystery which features a seemingly impossible crime committed inside a sealed-off room (or house, or hotel, or boat…) – is one of my personal favourite mystery sub-genres. Agatha Christie (And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express) is the queen of the locked door whodunnit but there are plenty of modern iterations to consider as well.
An Unwanted Guest, the latest book by Shari Lapena (author of the popular The Couple Next Door) is a perfect And Then There Were None read-alike. In these menacing and suspenseful mysteries, a murderer lurks among the unsuspecting guests of a remote hotel (An Unwanted Guest) and isolated island mansion (And Then There Were None) — and characters start dropping like flies. While I wouldn’t say that An Unwanted Guest comes anywhere close to the original, it does a great job with atmosphere. Set in a fancy, secluded, snowed-in Catskills resort, it ensures the trapped-in feeling that is so critical to the genre.
Another modern writer of locked room mysteries is Ruth Ware. Dysfunctional group dynamics play out amid an atmosphere of unease and taut suspense in her ominous novel In a Dark, Dark Wood. Like And Then There Were None, it takes place in a remote location cut off from outside world, trapping together an assortment of flawed characters harbouring dark secrets. It follows Leonora Shaw, a crime writer who lives a solitary life in London until she receives an invitation to a hen party for a friend she hasn’t seen in nearly 10 years. The party take place in a cottage, tucked away with spotty phone service. We know from the very beginning that something horrible happens at the cottage, but just what, and to whom, how, and why will keep you turning the pages.
If you are looking for something that feels a bit more historical, there is A Christmas Homecoming by Anne Perry. It’s Christmastime in Victorian England and Caroline Fielding has travelled with her young husband, Joshua, and his acting troupe from London to a manor in Whitby. Outside, a relentless snow storm isolates the cast and underlying tensions begin to penetrate the atmosphere. Then Caroline stumbles over a dead body in the dark of night.
Isolated by the storm, only one of them could be the murderer. But who?
Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None also provides the setup for The Prisoner in the Castle by Susan Elia MacNeal. Set toward the end of 1942, it follows British special agent Maggie Hope as she stays at Killoch Castle, a onetime Victorian hunting lodge on the tiny Hebridean island of Scarra. Life is pleasant enough, until the nine other agents on Scarra begin being murdered. As a storm cuts off all possibility of help from the mainland, Maggie attempts to discover which of her fellow “guests” is a cold-blooded killer.
If you like puzzles (or perhaps that game Clue), the locked door whodunit sub-genre probably appeals to you too. The examples mentioned here, plus many more, are available for you to borrow from the County of Lennox & Addington Libraries. Contact your local branch or visit www.CountyLibrary.ca.