The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes (Paperback)

by Mike Ashley (Editor) "Claire Doherty practised her grief-stricken expression in the mirror..." (more)
Key Phrases: centre drawer, impossible crimes, impossible murder, Abel Chase, Claire Delacroix, The Thinking Machine (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Penzler Pick, February 2001: The very thing that first hooked me on mysteries long ago is the element most on display in this fat and satisfying volume: amazement. Not whodunit or why, but how. And that really means wow, as in, "Wow, I can't believe what I just read!" Such cases were originally the province of Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dupin, whose unraveling of such sensational "impossible" crimes as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" gave the reading public of an earlier era its appetite for gasp-inducing solutions. Just a few decades later the mystery genre had progressed to a more rational approach, with which Arthur Conan Doyle equipped Sherlock Holmes, though the crimes demanding our greatest sleuth's attention were highly fanciful more often than not. Snakes in airshafts menacing gentlewomen! Clubs restricted to redheaded fellows! Wow!

Next appeared the exceedingly baroque whimsies of John Dickson Carr, who eventually grew to feel the strain of being regarded as the Houdini of mystery literature. But before he saw his powers of invention begin to flag, Carr, who also wrote as Carter Dickson, had defined the subgenre of locked-room crime for all time, producing over 50 novels and dozens of short stories featuring some startling variations on the theme. The Hollow Man, published in the U.S. as The Three Coffins, is considered by experts to be this author's greatest achievement. It offers in the course of the story a seminal lecture about the locked-room crime.

In this bargain tome, Carr is represented by "The Silver Curtain," in which a man standing alone in a cul-de-sac is fatally stabbed in the back. From a less well-known writer, Clayton Rawson (a real-life magician as well as an authorial one), comes a tale written in response to a challenge by Carr, his friend and rival: make a man vanish from a phone booth. (He succeeds, of course.) Also on hand are four clever contemporary tricksters: Peter Lovesey, H.R.F. Keating, Lawrence Block, and Edward D. Hoch. There's almost too much entertainment value in these 29 tales assembled by veteran editor and mystery scholar Mike Ashley. "I've endeavored to bring together a collection of stories," he says, "that seem utterly baffling and where the solution is equally amazing." That's OK. Ration them, and you'll only savor them more. --Otto Penzler

Review
Always a staple of crime fiction, the locked-room mystery has been around for what seems like forever. Some writers have made a career out of it, like John Dickson Carr, who has one of his stories featured here. And now, gathered together in this tome of a book is a selection taken from the middle of the 19th century right up to the present day, plus a number of (seemingly) impossible crimes as well. The cream of the crop are by Lois H Gresh & Robert Weinberg who put a headless corpse in a sealed elevator, Lynne Wood Block and Lawrence Block with a dead book-collector in a sealed room and Michael Collins, whose detective investigates a jewel theft and murder in a sealed vault. But every story in this anthology is worth a look, if only for the brain-teasing quality. (Kirkus UK) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers (October 30, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786707909
• ISBN-13: 978-0786707904
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #510,682 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars So THAT'S how they did it!!!, January 4, 2002

By	K. H. ZAINAL (Malaysia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A great collection of 'howdunnit' mysteries. Murder most foul (the fictional kind of course) is made more fun for the reader when the crime was committed in an impossible manner. How did a fresh corpse end up in a coffin which has laid undisturbed for two decades? How did the murderer-thief escape from a 10th floor showroom that was constantly under observation (and with only one exit...guarded, naturally)?

Most of the short stories here were written specifically for this book but there are some great classics as well like "The Silver Curtain", "The Adventure of the Jacobean House" and my personal favourite, "Off the Face of the Earth" by Clayton Rawson.

I admire the authors who must have racked their brains to come up with ingenious, incredible, seemingly impossible yet logical solutions to their stories. The reader is challenged to solve it but amateurs like me just dont bother. I prefer to sit back and enjoy the ride.

As I write this, amazon.com has does not have ready copies of this anthology. Since its a UK published book, I advise potential sleuths to log onto amazon.co.uk. They have more copies of this book than they know what to do with!!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Locked Room Mysteries Rule!, November 26, 2000

By A Customer

This book is filled with some great locked room mystery stories. These are always the hardest to solve, but the most satisfying to read. If you love a challenge, try to figure some of these out.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, not great collection, December 5, 2001

By	K. Braithwaite (inkster, MI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

There is a lot of fun stuff here, at a good price. Unfortunately quite a lot of the book is original stories, and inevitably they are not as good as some classics not included. But if you like locked rooms, there is no reason to hesitate about buying this.