Top 10 Locked Room Novels

[Brian]

My top ten Locked Room mysteries:

1.   The Hollow Man (The Three Coffins) - John Dickson Carr
2.   The Judas Window - Carter Dickson (John Dickson Carr)
3.   The Mystery of the Yellow Room - Gaston Leroux
4.   The Shade of Time - David Duncan
5.   Invisible Green - John Sladek
6.   The Woman in the Wardrobe - Peter Antony
7.   Nine Times Nine - Anthony Boucher
8.   The Seven Wonders of Crime - Paul Halter
9.   The Death of Lawrence Vining - Alan Thomas
10.  The Burning Court - John Dickson Carr

That's the list as of today, anyway. 

[ocogdill]

Good List

[Kevin Burton Smith]

Everyone knows I'm not much of a classic mystery guy, leaning way over towards the dark end of the street, but I have read enough locked room mysteries to know what I like. And what I like is Bill Pronzini's 1988 hard-boiled locked-roomer SHACKLES, one of his Nameless mysteries, back when Nameless was still nameless. It's sort of an inverted locked room mystery, in that it's not so much about how the killer did it, but how Nameless will get out of a locked room. It has echoes of Stephen King's MISERY in it, but it's a fresh and original spin, and just a good solid, captivating read.

[Brian]

And Shackles is linked to one of the best Nameless short stories, and that short story is also a terrific locked-room mystery, about an impossible theft from a bookstore.