Links
To Buy The Mysteries of Reverend Dean, please visit the following sites:
Lighthouse Publishing
Barnes & Noble
Amazon UK
Amazon Canada
Grave Matters
Customers can search the inventory of this mystery bookshop by keywords, including preselected phrases such as "Locked room mystery." Upon clicking this phrase, over 150 locked-room books appear for sale, indexed by format, author and edition.
Other Sites of Interest:
(Most headings, and all underlined words, are hyperlinks.)
Crippen & Landru
Publisher of many of the books listed in the Suggested Reading page.
These aren't short stories, but rather a list of over 100 of the best locked-room novels ever written, as selected by an international panel of experts. Background commentary is provided by panelist John Pugmire, with cover images compiled by Steve Lewis. I can't even imagine how long it took Steve to collect and scan the covers of all these volumes. This is one of several links to Steve's exceptional and comprehensive Mystery*File website, which has now morphed into an excellent blog.
Locked Rooms and Other Improbable Crimes
Initially conceived as suggestions for a third edition of Bob Adey's Locked Room Murders, Steve Lewis has compiled over 50 locked-room mystery references, the majority of which are short stories. A continuation of this list has
been assembled by John Pugmire.
Tokyopop
Publisher of The Kindaichi Case Files. There is also a Kindaichi discussion group and Wikipedia article. Perhaps the easiest way to purchase these books is to click the desired volumes from this convenient Amazon.com list. Failing that, many volumes are available at Mile High Comics.
GAdetection
Although largely devoted to golden age detective fiction, this intelligent group
discusses a variety of mystery-related topics, including locked-room puzzles.
GAdetection Wiki
Affiliated with Jon Jermey's GAdetection discussion group, this rapidly growing wiki has articles on a variety of subjects. Topics range from reviews of books listed in the Suggested Reading page, to biographies and bibliographies of several locked-room authors. Although space restrictions prevent citing all of its excellent articles, there are discussions of Ed Hoch's short stories here and here, as well as entries on John Dickson Carr here and here.
Mysterylist
This site contains several notable articles, including 'Locked-Room' Mysteries and Other Impossible Crimes
and a John Dickson Carr page. Although the latter deals primarily with Carr's novels, it makes interesting reading and has hyperlinks leading to discussions of Carr's individual series characters. Sadly, the creator of this site, Wyatt James (aka Grobius Shortling) passed away in 2006.
Locked Room Mystery
This is an excellent and detailed entry in Wikipedia.
Paul Halter
This site is devoted to the French author who specializes in locked-room mysteries.
Unfortunately, only one collection of short stories has been published in English, The Night of the Wolf. Additional information is available at this Mysteryfile.com page.
Jdcarr
As might be inferred from its name, this site specializes in John Dickson Carr. Of particular note, however, are its excellent forums; including a "General" forum, which discusses "anything and everything Mystery related."
The Locked Room Mystery mystery
This amusing parody on locked-room mysteries was written
by Jasper Fforde.
The Classic Mystery Homepage
This outstanding
collection of articles by Mike Grost includes an extensive guide to early impossible crime stories, with an equally complete list of later impossible crime fiction. Not content to compile and intelligently critique such stories, Mike has also written several original locked-room mysteries. Moreover, he has assembled an excellent bibliography of stories by Ed Hoch, as well as a list of comic books featuring locked-room themes. Unfortunately, no comics or graphic novels published after 1965 are listed. I suppose even Mike has his limitations.
No Escape: Jacques Futrelle and the Titanic
This excellent article by Jeffrey Marks is from the equally superb Mystery Scene magazine.
JA Konrath
The personable author of Whiskey Sour, Dirty Martini, and other mixes and mysteries has also written two locked-room short stories, On the Rocks and With a Twist.
They're available by clicking next to the "55 Proof" notebook icon in JA's site. With a Twist is particularly good.
Project Gutenberg
This site provides complete, online copies of G.K. Chesterton's The Innocence of Father Brown and The Wisdom of Father Brown. The former, in particular, has several locked-room mysteries.
Audio books and other titles are also available.
Mysterious Locked Room Mystery of the Body With A Knife In It
I suppose it was inevitable: a venerable sub-genre parodied in a YouTube video.
Churches
Although the good reverend is ensconced in Dark Pine, if he lived in any of the following areas he'd attend one of these churches: Mecklenburg Community Church (Charlotte, NC); Redeemer Presbyterian (NY, NY); Saddleback Church (southern California); Willow Creek Community Church (Chicago area); or University Presbyterian (Seattle, WA).
Jonathan Creek
A comprehensive and well-designed website for fans of the BBC TV show.
The Lost Special
As any fan of Sherlock Holmes knows, the official canon of Holmes stories includes 56 short stories and 4 novels. However, if any entry can claim the status of a 57th story, it is The Lost Special.
Not only was it written by Doyle, but it features "an amateur reasoner of some celebrity," who avers that "when the impossible has been eliminated the residuum, however improbable, must contain the truth." There is even an allusion to Prof. Moriarty, described as "one of the acutest brains in England." In any event, The Lost Special features an impossible crime, rather than a locked-room mystery, but it deserves mention due to its pedigree alone.
The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box
Publisher of Locked Rooms and Open Spaces and many other books.
One Manga
This large site contains hundreds of manga titles, including Detective School Q and Detective Conan (aka Case Closed), both of which focus on locked-room mysteries. Additional information on Detective School Q can be found in this Wikipedia article.
This site reproduces the entirety of Bookhunter, described in the Suggested Reading tab. However, I hesitate to recommend this site, because the images are so much smaller than the graphic novel that not only does it degrade the reading experience, but the lettering—bad enough in the original—is even harder to read in this format. Nonetheless, for those who can't afford the graphic novel, this is better than not reading it at all.
Although the Futrelle compilation described in the "Suggested Reading" section collects 20 of Futrelle's "Thinking Machine" stories, he actually wrote 50 short stories featuring that character. This site provides links to all 50 stories in their entirety.
This site mirrors the Detective School Q entries mentioned in One Manga, above. However, it also includes the first few Kindaichi Case Files stories printed in the Tokyo Pop volumes, as well as stories from The New Kindaichi Detective Files, which don't appear in the Tokyo Pop paperbacks.
Link to Hal White:
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