Locked-Room Mysteries: Impossible Crimes, Unforgettable Stories
Locked-room mysteries thrive on the impossible: Crimes committed under circumstances that defy logic, leaving readers to puzzle out how — and why — the seemingly unsolvable happened. This list gathers contemporary and classic takes on the genre, spanning isolated islands, snowed-in hotels, luxury trains, and even off-world colonies. Each story traps characters in a confined space where danger lurks and escape is impossible. Fans of Golden Age classics and modern thrillers alike will find something to savor in these tales of murder, misdirection, and locked doors — where no one gets out until the truth is found … or the killer strikes again.
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Add to BookshelfWith a Vengeance
by Riley Sager
In 1954, Anna Matheson boards a luxury overnight train bound for Chicago that she’s commissioned, along with a list of names and a heart hardened by loss. Twelve years earlier, during the height of World War II, six people shattered her family’s life. Now, under a false guise, Anna has orchestrated a chilling reunion — trapping each of them aboard. Her plan is precise: Confront the ghosts of her past, unearth long-buried truths, and ensure justice is waiting at the journey’s end. But when one of the passengers is found murdered before dawn, it becomes clear that Anna isn’t the only one harboring secrets — or seeking revenge. As the train hurtles into the icy night, Anna must navigate layers of deception, reckon with the cost of vengeance, and protect the very people she came to condemn. Because someone on board is determined that none of them — Anna included — reach the final stop alive.
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$30.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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Exiles
by Mason Coile
The human crew sent to prepare the first colony on Mars arrives to find the new base half-destroyed and the three robots sent to set it up in disarray — the machines have formed alliances, chosen their own names, and picked up some disturbing beliefs. Each must be interrogated. But one of them is missing. In this barren, hostile landscape where even machines have nightmares, the astronauts will need to examine all the stories – especially their own – to get to the truth.
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$28.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Sanatorium: Reese’s Book Club
by Sarah Pearse
High in the Swiss Alps, Le Sommet is a newly renovated luxury hotel with a dark past. Once an abandoned sanatorium, it’s now the setting for Elin Warner’s uneasy visit to celebrate her brother’s engagement. A storm traps them in the isolated hotel, and when Elin wakes to find the bride-to-be missing, her instincts as a detective kick in. As tensions rise and panic spreads, Elin races to uncover the truth — before it’s too late. Another woman has vanished, and she may have held the key to the danger lurking within Le Sommet.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
by Soji Shimada
Astrologer, fortune teller, and self-styled detective Kiyoshi Mitarai must solve a macabre murder mystery that has baffled Japan for 40 years — in just one week. With the help of his freelance illustrator friend, Kiyoshi sets out to answer the questions that have haunted the country ever since: Who murdered the artist Umezawa, raped and killed his daughter, and then chopped up the bodies of six others to create Azoth, ‘the perfect woman’? With maps, charts, and other illustrations, this story of magic and illusion — pieced together like a great stage tragedy — challenges the reader to unravel the mystery before the final curtain falls. This quintessential Japanese “logic mystery” — eerie, gory, and intriguing — combines the puzzle-solving of Golden Age Western detective fiction with elements of shocking horror and dark humor.
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$17.95Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Decagon House Murders
by Yukito Ayatsuji
Translated from Japanese, this book is inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The Decagon House Murders follows members of a university mystery club as they spend a week on remote Tsunojima Island. Each student is nicknamed after a famous crime writer — Poe, Carr, Orczy, Christie, and others. Drawn by a past string of murders, they stay in a mysterious ten-sided house with no electricity or phones. As a new wave of killings begins, the group is slowly picked off. Ayatsuji’s tight pacing and eerie atmosphere build tension, while a parallel mainland investigation into the earlier crimes deepens the intrigue. A clever homage to Golden Age detective fiction, the novel is also gripping entertainment.
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$14.95Buy from Other Retailers:
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Prague Fatale
by Philip Kerr
A classic setup — a body found shot in a locked room at a country house — gets a dark twist in Philip Kerr’s Prague Fatale. It’s 1941, and detective Bernie Gunther is back in Berlin, working for the Kripo under the brutal Reinhard Heydrich. When Heydrich suspects an assassin among his Nazi inner circle, he summons Bernie to his country estate near Prague, hosting a weekend gathering of some of the Reich’s most feared men. One will be murdered, and one is the would-be killer. Bernie, cynical and sharp-tongued, navigates the danger with wit and weariness. As he notes, “You don’t say no to Heydrich and live.” A gripping blend of classic mystery and historical thriller, Kerr’s novel is anything but conventional.
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$22.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Honjin Murders
by Seishi Yokomizo
One of Japan’s greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time. In the winter of 1937, the village of Okamura is abuzz with excitement over the forthcoming wedding of a son of the grand Ichiyanagi family. But amid the gossip over the approaching festivities, there is also a worrying rumor – it seems a sinister masked man has been asking questions around the village. Then, on the night of the wedding, the Ichiyanagi household is awoken by a terrible scream, followed by the sound of eerie music. Death has come to Okamura, leaving no trace but a bloody samurai sword, thrust into the pristine snow outside the house. Soon, amateur detective Kosuke Kindaichi is on the scene to investigate what will become a legendary murder case, but can this scruffy sleuth solve a seemingly impossible crime?
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An Unwanted Guest
by Shari Lapena
It’s winter in the Catskills and Mitchell’s Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing – maybe even romantic – weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge wood-burning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery. So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity – and all contact with the outside world – the guests settle in and try to make the best of it. Soon, though, one of the guests turns up dead – it looks like an accident. But when a second guest dies, they start to panic. Within the snowed-in paradise, something – or someone – is picking off the guests one by one. And there’s nothing they can do but hunker down and hope they can survive the storm – and one another.
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$18.00Buy from Other Retailers:
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The Caves of Steel
by Isaac Asimov
Detective Elijah Baley is swept into one of the most emotionally charged and dangerous situations in Earth’s history when he’s tasked with solving the murder of an illustrious robot scientist. Like most people left behind on an overpopulated Earth, New York City police detective Baley had little love for either the arrogant Spacers or their robotic companions. But when a prominent Spacer is murdered under mysterious circumstances, Baley is ordered to the Outer Worlds to help track down the killer. The relationship between Life and his Spacer superiors, who distrusted all Earthmen, was strained from the start. Then he learned that they had assigned him a partner: R. Daneel Olivaw. Worst of all was that the “R” stood for robot — and his positronic partner was made in the image and likeness of the murder victim!
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The Dying Game
by Asa Avdic
Do you live to play? Or play to live? The year is 2037. The Soviet Union never fell, and much of Europe has been consolidated under the totalitarian Union of Friendship. On the tiny island of Isola, seven people have been selected to compete in a forty-eight-hour test for a top-secret intelligence position. One of them is Anna Francis, a workaholic bureaucrat with a nine-year-old daughter she rarely sees and a secret that haunts her. Her assignment: To stage her own death and then to observe, from her hiding place inside the walls of the house, how the six other candidates react to the news that a murderer is among them. Who will take control? Who will crack under pressure? But then a storm rolls in, the power goes out, and the real game begins …
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You Are Fatally Invited
by Ande Pliego
When renowned anonymous author J. R. Alastor hires former aspiring writer Mila del Angél to host a writing retreat at his private manor off the coast of Maine, she jumps at the chance — particularly since she has an axe to grind with one of the invitees. The guest list? Six thriller authors, all masters of deceit, misdirection, and mayhem. Alastor and Mila have masterminded a week of games, trope-fueled riddles, and maybe a jump scare or two — the perfect cover for Mila to plot a murder of her own. But when a guest turns up dead — and it’s not the murder she planned — Mila finds herself trapped in a different narrative altogether. With a storm isolating the island, and the body count rising, Mila must outwit a killer who knows literally every trick in the book.
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The Night of the Storm
by Nishita Parekh
Hurricane Harvey is about to hit Houston. Meanwhile, single mom Jia Shah is already having a rough week, and now their apartment complex is under a mandatory evacuation order. Jia’s sister, Seema, has invited them to hunker down in her fancy house in Sugar Land. Despite Jia’s misgivings, Jia concedes it’s probably the best place to keep her son, Ishaan, safe during the hurricane. With Jia’s philandering ex scrutinizing her every move, all too eager to snatch back custody of Ishaan, she can’t afford to make a mistake.As the storm escalates, tensions rise quickly, and soon someone’s dead. Was it a horrible accident or is there a murderer in their midst?
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There Should Have Been Eight
by Nalini Singh
They met when they were teenagers. Now they’re adults, and time has been kind to some and unkind to others — none more so than to Bea, the one they lost nine long years ago. They’ve gathered to reminisce at Bea’s family’s estate, a once-glorious mansion straight out of a gothic novel. Best friends, old flames, secret enemies, and new lovers are all under one roof. But when the weather turns and they’re snowed in at the edge of eternity, there’s nowhere left to hide from their shared history. As the walls close in, the pretense of normality gives way to long-buried grief, bitterness, and rage. Underneath it all, there’s the nagging feeling that Bea’s shocking death wasn’t what it was claimed to be. And before the weekend is through, the truth will be unleashed.
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$19.00Buy from Other Retailers:
