Talk:Locked room mystery

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I added quite a few novels and shorts (many in French) and restored the alphabetic sort. Someone added a reference to Dick Donovan as one of the earliest locked room crime stories and as far as I'm concerned, it's without any attribution. Please contact me to discuss.

````owenburns 14 July 2007


I just added some new material about true crime and added/changed a couple of items in the authors/works section. It might not be obvious at first sight, but novels are listed first, sorted by author surname, followed by short stories. There was a reference among the Examples which included both Peter Lovesey's 'Amorous Corpse' (which is an impossible crime) and Dorothy Sayers' 'Five Red Herrings' (which isn't). I added the Lovesey short and deleted the Sayers reference. If I've misunderstood, please feel free to edit some more. Owenburns 20:48, 17 June 2007 (UTC)owenburns


Added a lot of exclusive content from Crime fiction in an attempt to shorten, regularise, organise and redistribute that overtly lengthy article. Hence, this article may be incomplete and appear a bit unencylopediac. May require attention chance 10:09, Dec 19, 2003 (UTC)

Anyone reckon it's worth adding the UK TV series Johnathan Creek to the article? Just about every week is based around a locked-room mystery of some sort (and there's the interesting aspect of the eponymous crime-solver being a magic consultant to stage and TV).Sockatume 15:28, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC) Done. In future you might want to make fairly undisputable changes like this straightaway.--Hugo Hadlow 00:04, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I don't remember a whole lot about the series, so I didn't really feel like diving in. Cheers tho. Sockatume 01:14, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I think the first "Tooms" story in the X-Files TV series is like a locked room mystery. Doberdog 10:34, 8 June 2006 (UTC) Doberdog

Contents

[edit] Kiaros

Having read the story by Baum (Suicide of Kiaros), I don't really see it as a "hate crime", considering he perpetrated it out of desparation. 68.39.174.238 17:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rules

... "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (1841). The story contains Poe's statement of the "rules" of the locked-room mystery. - Where? Aliter 18:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)


Why not read the article "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", wherein you will find this information? I added an explicit pointer to aid the slow reader. Ortolan88 20:07, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I haven't been on en: much lately, and the whole mention of those ""rules"" has since been removed, but the answer to your question would have been:

short
because if we were to expect them there, than that text should have linked it.
long version
Because I knew that story very well, had reread it that very month, and had done so once more just before posting, just to be sure nothing remotely like rules was in them. And following your lead, I see that there was indeed nothing on that page to support that Poe was setting rules for this genre, if it could be called such at the time. The story does give, and that was quoted on the page, a good example of logical reasoning, if a faulty one.

Aliter 00:33, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] True Crime

I must say that the recently added "true crime" section sure does read like it was written by an old-fashioned journalist:

  1. "Surely all the devious methods described above are the products of over-heated and diabolically cunning minds and could never actually happen in real life?"
  2. "It transpired . . . "
  3. "Another baffling puzzler . . . "

Since there is not a link to George Colvocoresses my interest in the authorship rises. Since the contributor User:Owenburns has no actual page, my interest in the authorship rises more. Since I was unfairly accused of plagiarism on the grounds that something I did was "too well written to be original" I would hardly say the same of someone else, but I sure would like to know where this stuff came from. Fascinating addition, by the way, and at least George Colvocoresses was really murdered, so I could be full of it here, but that's a big chunk of unattributed stuff all written in the same old-fashioned style. Ortolan88

It's a nice read, but the style is less encyclopedic and more like it was taken from a book of "true crime" stories. A Google search finds nothing but Wikipedia when searching for the sentences, so I can't conclusively say that it's a copyvio but it is pretty darn fishy. --TexasDex 06:06, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I can only find one source for the Morton Conroy story, a semi-fictional book, What the Corpse Revealed by Hugh Miller. Miller writes that parts of his book are "products of the author's imagination and/or have been fictionalised". Can anyone find another citiation?

Also, I'm teased by the last sentence: "The technique was later used in a fictional locked-room mystery published in the UK and the US." Can anyone cite the title or author?

Elmore Judge 16:49, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The story under the heading "A Heavy Question" seems to be reproduced from the book Mysteries of the Unexplained. I can't find my copy, so I'm not sure if the wording is indentical, but I suspect so. (Edit: the identical text is quoted from that book on this website. So it would appear to be plagiarized.) Several of the other stories in this section are in that book as well. Citations would be helpful. Parables 15:29, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the paragraph which the editor above noted as being identical to a website and thus a copyright violation. It is stored here for convenience, in case someone can clear up the duplication.

A Heavy Question - At the end of a day's work in 1974, workers for the Dowing Construction Company of Indianapolis left a 5 ton steel wrecking ball hanging from a crane 200 feet above the ground. When they came back the next morning the ball was gone. Police and all concerned were baffled, and the ball was never found.

I have also removed the sentence beginning "Let us examine ..." as being non-encyclopedic in tone. Accounting4Taste 16:49, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Kindaichi Case Files

I would very much like to contact the lady/gentleman who inserted a reference to the Kinaichi Case Files, hitherto unknown to me.

Owenburns

[edit] How about Long Dark Teatime of the Soul

Dirk Gently's client in The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul is found decapitated in a locked and barricaded basement room, his head spinning on a record turntable several feet from his seated body. It turns out that he was decapitated by a demon that hid behind a molecule until the cops left. But because of the supernatural component, does this count? ChristinaDunigan 01:58, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Christina, I agree with you and I've added Teatime to the list. BrendanAdkins (talk) 23:02, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Five Red Herrings paragraph

I've edited the paragraph where it talks about "The killer is seen committing a crime then is found dead". I managed to identify one misspelled story title as being by Peter Lovesey, corrected the title of the Dorothy L. Sayers novel, but the other reference was just too mangled to identify. If someone can figure out whether this is a novel or short story and identify its writer, by all means put it back. Accounting4Taste 17:54, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I believe I found the reference; the title was half-missing. I've added distinguishing information for a number of other entries, and deleted the suggestion that Carr's The Case of the Constant Suicides had a ghost at its heart (there are plenty of these stories with supernatural trappings). I'm not familiar with a number of these references and think it would be appropriate if someone gave their authors as well as the title. Accounting4Taste 18:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Identity

I'm sorry, I must strongly disagree with the recent addition about the 2003 film Identity and have thus deleted it. It's not a locked room mystery or even an impossible crime -- the characters do not have a "cast iron alibi", as suggested -- the solution to the mystery makes it dubious to include in this category (I don't wish to give away the ending, but it's not based on what I'd call a "physical" solution to the mystery, more a metaphysical one, which for me puts it in the category of solutions that depend upon supernatural means and hence rules it out of this category). Certainly it has a "twist" ending, and it's a movie I enjoyed very much, but I can't agree that it is an example that belongs here. Accounting4Taste 16:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Locked room puzzles

I've known similar scenarios used as a short lateral-thinking puzzle. The 'classic' being

A man is found hanging from a rope tied to the ceiling. He is too high to have got there unaided, and the room is locked from the inside, with no other exit. How?

and the usual answer, rot13ed (does Wikipedia have a better spoiler method?)

Ur fgbbq ba n oybpx bs vpr, juvpu zrygrq naq rincbengrq. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.232.250.254 (talk) 12:25, 31 October 2007 (UTC)