Locked Room Mystery: Difference between revisions

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The part of the show where the solution to the mystery is explained is [[The Summation]]. One common trick used is the [[Time-Delayed Death]]. Expect the police to have found that [[The Key Is Behind the Lock]] when the crime scene was discovered.

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== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Although it is not a crime show, the anime ''[[Spiral]]'' has a number of locked room mysteries that the protagonist must solve, including one literal locked room murder.

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* In the ''[[Ace Attorney]]'' manga, Turnabout Showtime is referred to as "the world's smallest locked-room murder", when Flip Chambers is somehow fatally stabbed inside his Sparklestar costume, which cannot hold anything in its hands and is impossible to open by the wearer (although it comes to light that there are workarounds for that, such as catching the zipper on a piece if wire, or wearing the costume backwards).

* Inverted on Bokurano. {{spoiler|All kids die in front of the surviving cast on Zearth's cockpit except for Waku, who died on Zearth's shoulder, Kako, who was murdered, and Ushiro, who brawled alone in the anime}}. Of course, nobody except the kids and the higher-ups on the military know that. Then again, {{spoiler|Daiichi ask Koyemshi to hide his corpse as to not let his siblings know he's dead}}.

== [[Comic Books]] ==

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* The central case in ''[[Bookhunter]]'' involves three concentric locked room mysteries: The thief entered a locked library, removed a book from a locked safe, and carried the book out past the alarm checkpoints—leaving so little evidence that the theft wasn't noticed until weeks later.

* There's one featured in ''[[Batman]]'' #700, where the significantly aged corpse of Carter Nichols is found dead in his basement. Batman and Robin are unable to solve the case, but it is later shown that {{spoiler|the present Carter Nichols went forward in time and killed his future self, causing his dead future self to return to the present. It's a [[Timey-Wimey Ball|bit confusing]].}}

== [[Film]] ==

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* Inverted in ''[[Law Abiding Citizen]]'', in that Clyde is somehow pulling off elaborate murders while locked in solitary confinement.

* Teddy Daniels is brought to ''[[Shutter Island]]'' to investigate a locked room mystery - in this case someone escaping from a locked and guarded room.

== [[Literature]] ==

* The original locked room mystery is ''The Murders in the Rue Morgue'', by [[Edgar Allan Poe]]. The story became the [[Trope Codifier]] for later detective murder mysteries.

* The original locked room mystery is ''[[The Murders in the Rue Morgue]]'', by [[Edgar Allan Poe]]. The story became the [[Trope Codifier]] for later detective murder mysteries.

* The deuterocanonical [[The Bible|Old Testament]] story ''Bel and the Dragon'' has similarities to a locked room mystery.

* The most famous [[Sherlock Holmes]] locked room mystery is probably "The Adventure Of The Speckled Band".

** Arguably, "The Adventure of the Empty House" was more popular.

** Before that, there was ''The Sign of Four''

* ''[[Discworld]]'':

* Parodied in the ~~''[[Discworld]]''~~ short story ''Theatre of Cruelty'', in which Vimes's [[Internal Monologue]] brings up the complaint that "wizards made locked room mysteries commonplace" (though there are never any actual examples of this happening in the series).

** Parodied in the short story "Theatre of Cruelty", in which Vimes's [[Internal Monologue]] brings up the complaint that "wizards made locked room mysteries commonplace" (though there are never any actual examples of this happening in the series).

** The ultimately non-fatal poisoning of Lord Vetinari in ''[[~~Discworld/~~Feet of Clay|Feet of Clay]]'' is a completely fair locked room mystery. It has an interesting partial subversion in that {{spoiler|the victim figures it out long before the "detective" does, but lets him do his job anyway.}}

** The ultimately non-fatal poisoning of Lord Vetinari in ''[[Feet of Clay (novel)|Feet of Clay]]'' is a completely fair locked room mystery. It has an interesting partial subversion in that {{spoiler|the victim figures it out long before the "detective" does, but lets him do his job anyway.}}

* Happens in the ''[[Finnegan Zwake]]'' series with the man in Finn and Stoppard's storage room (in ''Horizontal Man'') and Professor Freaze in his tent (in ''Worm Tunnel'').

* Intentionally played to the point of absurdity in ''[[The Long Dark Tea-~~Time of the Soul|The Long Dark Tea~~ Time of the Soul]]'' by [[Douglas Adams]]. Dirk Gently finds that his newest client, a wealthy man who had hired him as a security guard, had his head severed and placed on an active record machine while awaiting Dirk. Of course, the door to the room was locked from the inside when the scene was initially discovered. The police analyze this as an elaborate suicide done simply to cause trouble.

* Intentionally played to the point of absurdity in ''[[The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul]]'' by [[Douglas Adams]]. Dirk Gently finds that his newest client, a wealthy man who had hired him as a security guard, had his head severed and placed on an active record machine while awaiting Dirk. Of course, the door to the room was locked from the inside when the scene was initially discovered. The police analyze this as an elaborate suicide done simply to cause trouble.

* Occurs in Jeffrey Deaver's novel ''The Vanished Man'', where the killer is seemingly able to escape from a locked room where one of his victims is found, as well as disappear into a small crowd.

* Played with in [[Jasper Fforde]]'s ''The Big Over Easy'', a detective story using nursery rhyme characters. "The entire crime-fighting fraternity yesterday bade a tearful farewell to the last 'locked room' mystery at a large banquet held in its honor. The much-loved conceptual chestnut of mystery fiction for over a century had been unwell for many years and was finally discovered dead at 3:15 A.M. last Tuesday."

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* Many of the [[Simon Ark]] mysteries involve some kind of variation on the locked room mystery.

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== [[Live-Action TV]] ==

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== [[Live Action TV]] ==

* A more diluted form sometimes appears in a [[Police Procedural]] (e.g., ''[[CSI]]'') where the puzzle is eventually unraveled by an eccentric protagonist using more obvious clues and [[Applied Phlebotinum]].

* In genre television (e.g., ''[[The X-Files]]''), the puzzle is typically subverted when an eccentric protagonist ([[Agent Mulder]]), on the basis of flimsy evidence and wild speculation, reveals that a [[Monster of the Week]] did it. In this case the [[Monster of the Week]] is the one using [[Applied Phlebotinum]] in the form of special monster powers.

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* The mysteries on ''[[Banacek]]'' were all 'impossible crime' thefts; including locked room mysteries.

* Most of the first few seasons of ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]'', being heavily based on [[Agatha Christie]] and [[Little Old Lady Investigates]], were full of these.

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* In ''[[Warhammer Fantasy]]'', Deathmaster Snitch killed an Imperial noble that had locked himself into a tower with the only door being guarded by a large band of knights. The knights didn't notice anything until the following morning. In fact, no explanation is ever given for how he did it, making it even more of a mystery.

** [[Wild Mass Guessing|Easy.]] [[Assassin's Creed|He climbed the walls of the tower.]]

== [[Video Games]] ==

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* ''[[Trauma Center|Trauma Team's]]'' Forensics mode features a stage with this trope's exact name.

* Dr. Schrader's death in ''[[Professor Layton]] and the Diabolical Box'' is one of these. Layton concludes that {{spoiler|even though the office was too high up to exit from the window, the culprit did so anyway -- by tearing off a curtain and fashioning it into a makeshift rope}}.

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Reach's story (''The Big Idea'') in the [[Whateley Universe]] features one of these prominently. There's quite a bit of discussion about the ways in which one needs to examine such a mystery, before the final denouement happens more or less as expected.

== Web Resources ==

* [http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/ Crime Fiction] Resource site with locked room bibliographies.

== [[Real Life]] ==

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[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]

[[Category:Mystery Tropes]]

[[Category:Crime and Punishment Tropes]]

[[Category:Plots]]

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[[Category:~~Locked Room Mystery~~]]