For Connoisseurs Of the Mystery Genre: The Locked Room Tale

Locked room mysteries are perhaps the most perfect type of tale to read during a quarantine. Photo by Cynthia Hochswender
For the avid detective fiction fan, there is no puzzle more alluring than a locked room mystery. In its simplest form, it is a crime (usually a murder) that has been committed in a room sealed from the inside with no way out (and in theory, no way in).
How did the perpetrator enter and escape? Solving the mystery now becomes not only a whodunnit but a howdunnit.
“Locked room” is a term that is often used not just for crimes committed in a literal locked room but also for any crime done under seemingly impossible circumstances, where it appears the criminal had no way of leaving the scene (or entering it).
For example: A dead body is found outside in the snow. There is no weapon near the body and no footsteps can be seen anywhere around it.
This could be considered a “locked room” murder, even though it does not take place in a room at all, because there appears to be no way for the crime to have been committed without the criminal vanishing into thin air afterward.
Like the armchair sleuth, the murder (or theft)-at-a-manor-party, or the inheritance-hungry family, the locked room mystery is one of the many tropes that furnishes detective fiction. They have a long and resplendent history within the genre — with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe often credited as the first murder mystery novel, as well as a locked room tale.
It’s a plot device that has been used by writers around the world, by Japanese crime writers (“The Tattoo Murder Case” by Akimitsu Takagi and “Murder in the Crooked House” by Soji Shimada), Scandinavian writers (“The Locked Room” by Maj Sjöwall) as well as by Agatha Christie in England (“The Murder of Roger Ackroyd” ) and Ellery Queen in America (look for “The King Is Dead”), with the acknowledged master of the sub-genre being John Dickson Carr, who is famous for his tricky “howdunnits” (look for “The Hollow Man” if you’d like to try one).
Mystery fans love them because it’s always more satisfying to solve a puzzle that looks impossible — but isn’t.
An important aspect of the locked room mystery is that it has to be solvable with a rational solution. Mystery fans will give thumbs down to any tale that ends with the perpetrator having the ability to walk through walls using magic or something like that.
The most ingenious mystery authors have found lots of different ways that these seemingly impossible crimes could be achieved — mechanical traps, hidden entrances, delayed deaths, suicides made to look like murders.
And the greatest of them will provide you with all the clues you need — and then still deliver an ending you never saw coming.
Many of the greatest locked room mysteries were written in the Golden Age of Crime Fiction, which roughly includes the 1920s and 1930s. Picking up a vintage paperback mystery can provide not only the fun of solving a crime in the safety of one’s home; it can also transport you to another era.
Another way to enjoy good old-fashioned crime fiction in the safety of your favorite armchair: Radio theater from The Two Of Us Productions in Copake, N.Y., which presents thrillers by golden age writers in an old-time radio format. The theater will sometimes dramatize John Dickson Carr tales. So far the schedule for this autumn includes The Shadow in “The Case of The River of Eternal Woe,” and “My Dear Niece,” both on Sept. 5; “Acting Like A Forger,” a Dragnet police story, is on Oct. 3. Additional tales are expected to be added to the schedule.
For information on the tales, and to find out how to tune in, go to www.thetwoofusproductions.org.
At the 44th annual Stratton Brook Invitational varsity cross country meet in Simsbury, Conn., Saturday, Sept. 6, Housatonic Valley Regional High School had three athletes finish in the top 15. At left, Silas Tripp finished in 9th place. At right, Hannah Johnson finished in 11th place. Middle, Finn Malone finished in 15th place.
Housatonic Valley Regional High School boys varsity soccer lost 3-2 against Nonnewaug High School in overtime Wednesday, Sept. 3. HVRHS took a 2-0 lead in the first half with goals from Gustavo Portillo and Everet Belancik, above. Nonnewaug tied up the score late in the second half with goals in the 77th minute and the 84th minute. The final Nonnewaug goal came in overtime and the game ended 3-2. Below, Henry Berry secures possession for HVRHS.
Simon Markow
Housatonic Valley Regional High School senior Ava Segalla, above, surpassed 100 varsity goals during the game against Northwestern Regional High School Friday, Sept. 5. HVRHS won the game 4-3 with two goals from Segalla and two more from freshman Lyla Diorio, below.
Simon Markow
SALISBURY — On Sunday, Sept. 7, Lou Bucceri of the Salisbury Association Historical Society led a group of curious participants upstream from the dam on the Housatonic River into a heavily wooded area that was once the site of a sprawling industrial complex.
The trip to see what remains of the Horatio Ames iron works, and the Housatonic Rail Road’s industrial complex was part of the Housatonic Heritage series of walks in Connecticut and Massachusetts on weekends through Oct. 5.
Bucceri said that Ames was the son of a successful industrial family in eastern Massachusetts. The Ames shovel was ubiquitous in the early 19th century.
Young Ames turned out to be an indifferent salesman, Bucceri said. “He was an innovator, a tinkerer.”
So the Ames family, in conjunction with two other Massachusetts families with similar business interests and sons that needed jobs, bought property along the Housatonic River for Horatio to establish an iron works in 1832. By 1835 only Ames remained of the original three.
As the group made their way along the newly cleared trail, Bucceri pointed to a partially submerged tree in the river.
The tree marks the approximate spot of a second, smaller falls upstream from the Great Falls. Bucceri said the “Little Falls” was dynamited when the Hartford Electric Company built the dam in 1914 because the engineers feared the volume and force of the water would be too much for the new dam.
Off to west was a lagoon, completely covered in chartreuse-colored slime.
Bucceri said the lagoon is the site of where the Housatonic Railroad, which bought the site when Ames went out of business, had their roundtable for turning railroad cars and engines around.
As the group completed the short hike, Bucceri detailed how Ames had success at first with railroad locomotive wheels and innovations in iron production.
But the depression of 1857 was hard on American railroads, and in turn on Ames. Production fell 90%.
Ames tried to get into defense contracting when the Civil War began. After a couple of false starts and a strong suggestion of corruption in federal defense appropriations, Ames did finally land a contract to build 15 cannons that shot a 125-pound projectile six miles.
Ames was ready to deliver the guns in May of 1865.
Unfortunately for him, the war ended in April. Bucceri said the federal government lost no time backing out of the contract, and that was it for the Ames iron works.
The property was soon sold to the railroad, and then again to the electric company.
And Nature moved back in, doing an excellent job of reclaiming the site.
“This was an industrial area,” Bucceri said, gesturing around. “Can you tell?”