"The locked-room mystery-otherwise known as the "impossible crime" mystery-is not to be confused with the closed-circle mystery often associated with the queen of Golden Age detective fiction, Agatha Christie. The classic "country house during a blizzard" setting with an array of suspects, each of whom might have committed the murder, is a closed-circle setup, as is Christie's Orient Express train, and the steamer in Death on the Nile. In a locked-room mystery, it seems that no one could have done it and escaped undetected."
"Wake Up Dead Man, now streaming on Netflix,itself contains a locked-room mystery. The charismatic but sulfurous Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) steps into a storage alcove to the side of the altar during Good Friday service and ends up stabbed in the back, despite the entire congregation observing that no one has followed him into the alcove."
"John Dickson Carr-an American writer who lived in England and set most of his novels there-is considered a master of the genre, and Wake Up Dead Man prominently features Carr's 1935 novel The Hollow Man (initially published in the U.S. as The Three Coffins), often touted as his masterpiece."
Whodunit and whydunit mysteries dominate contemporary fiction and television while the Golden Age favored howdunit locked-room puzzles. Wake Up Dead Man incorporates a locked-room case and includes a short disquisition by detective Benoit Blanc. During Good Friday service Monsignor Jefferson Wicks enters a storage alcove and is later found stabbed in the back despite witnesses observing that no one followed him into the alcove. Locked-room mysteries present crimes that appear impossible to commit and escape. Closed-circle mysteries instead isolate a known set of suspects, as in country-house settings, Orient Express, and Death on the Nile. John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man remains a landmark of the subgenre.
Read at Slate Magazine
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