The Locked Room Mystery or Impossible Crime tale is the very oldest type of true Mystery tale if you consider Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1831) to be the first Mystery story. Certainly there were precursors in the works of J. Sheridan Le Fanu and others but Poe solidified the genre and it has changed very little since.
In Poe’s tale there is a locked room in which a mother and daughter have been horrifically slain. C. August Dupin, also the first amateur detective, shows up the police and reveals how the sealed room wasn’t so sealed off after all. Witnesses hear strange noises that make the superstitious think the women were killed by a demon. The truth turns out to be an escaped pet orangutan.
Poe was first but he wrote only that one locked room story. Otto Penzler’s introduction to The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries talks about the master of the Locked Room story:
“…there can be no argument that the greatest practitioner of this demanding form was John Dickson Carr. Not only did Carr produce one hundred twenty-six novels, short stories, and radio plays under his own name and as Carter Dickson, but the range of seemingly impossible murder methods he created was so broad and varied that it simply freezes the brain to contemplate.”
What makes this sub-genre of Mystery so tantalizing for me is the appearance of the supernatural. Poe had it in “Murders in the Rue Morgue” and the man who inspired Carr also had it. This was G. K. Chesterton. The English writer who created Father Brown, also mixed in elements of the weird and unnatural into his mysteries. In stories like “The Blast of the Book” or “The Invisible Man”, Father Brown used his vast knowledge of sin to see the truth.
Like the false monster story, the solution is always earthly, but until Dr. Fell or Sir Henry Mellivale reveals what really happened in the House in the Goblin Woods the reader gets a slight chill of the ghost story. In this way, characters like Simon Ark and Henry Bencolin rate as occult detectives though their solutions are always of the Sherlock Holmes variety and “No Ghosts Need Apply”.
Again like the false monster story, the locked room mystery has feelers back to the old Gothics of Ann Radcliffe, where no matter how crazy the scenario, a logical explanation was offered at the end to explain away the supernatural. For the horror fan, this type of catharsis is disappointing and unnecessary. But to the Mystery fan, the victory of Order over Chaos is standard business and how convoluted but still possible the explanation is a delight in itself. Carr, and Chesterton before him, was one of those writers who could lead you down the primrose path then stun with the actual answer.
As Otto Penzler mentioned, Carr wrote radio scripts in both England and America. Here are some of the best, most featuring a weird element, all impossible crimes:
Murder Clinic – “Death in the Dressing Room” (September 29, 1942)
Suspense – “Lord of the Witch Doctors” (October 27, 1942)
Suspense – “The Devil in the Summer-House” (November 3, 1942)
Suspense – “Will You Make a Bet with Death?” (November 10, 1942)
Suspense – “Menace in Wax” (November 17, 1942)
Suspense –“The Body Snatchers” (November 24, 1942)
Suspense – “The Bride Vanishes” (December 1, 1942)
Suspense – “Till Death Do Us Part” (December 15, 1942)
Suspense – “Nothing Up My Sleeve” (January 5, 1943)
Suspense – “The Devil’s Saint” (January 19, 1943)
Suspense – “The Hangman Won’t Wait” (February 9, 1943)
Suspense – “Will You Walk Into My Parlor?” (February 23, 1943)
Suspense – “Cabin B-13” (March 16, 1943)
Suspense – “The Customers Like Murder” (March 23, 1943)
Suspense – “The Dead Sleep Lightly” (March 30, 1943)
Suspense – “Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble” (April 6, 1943)
Suspense – “Death Flies Blind” (May 4, 1943)
Suspense – “Mister Markham, Antique Dealer” (May 11, 1943)
Suspense – “Five Canaries in a Room” (June 8, 1943)
Suspense – “The Man Without a Body” (June 22, 1943)
