Category Archives: Jeffrey Deaver

Crime Fiction Alphabet: L is for Locked Room Mysteries

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The mystery in which a crime (almost always a murder) takes place behind seemingly impenetrable doors where the culprit has to all appearances vanished into thin air is probably the most enduring staple of crime fiction. Having been around since the birth of modern detective fiction (literally as Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders at the Rue Morgue is generally considered to be the first detective novel and is a locked room mystery) it’s easy to dismiss this kind of story as old-fashioned. But although they had their heyday during the Golden Age of detective fiction, people do keep re-inventing and re-imagining the theme to this very day. Just as every sci-fi writer has to have a go at depicting a dystopian future, it seems inside every crime writer (and some non crime writers) there is a locked room mystery story demanding to be told.

In a bibliography entitled Locked Room Murders (last published in 1991) Robert Adey listed and described 2000 novels and short stories in this sub-genre. I have neither the in-depth knowledge nor the time to discuss quite that many examples so I’ll share just a few of the ones I like most. Please feel free to share your favourite locked room mystery in the comments.

In 1981 John Dickson Carr’s The Hollow Man (1935) (a.k.a. The Three Coffins) was voted the best-ever locked room mystery by an esteemed panel of mystery writers. I’m not sure it would get my personal vote as best-ever, but it is certainly one of the purest examples of the art form, containing two variations on the locked room murder. The second of these is probably the first instance of an outdoor ‘locked room’ where the principles are applied in a completely different setting. The victim is walking alone in the middle of a snow covered London street when he is shot after a shout is heard. There are no footprints in the snow other than the victim’s but it is determined he was shot at close range. The lengthy but clever denouement is given by one of the most pompous sleuths I’ve ever come across.

Agatha Christie has penned several locked room mysteries but my favourite is Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1938). The house-guests of millionaire Simeon Lee hear a crash, a wailing then a scream and they rush to Lee’s room and find it locked. When they break the door down they discover Lee with his throat cut in a pool of blood and the only evidence is a bit of rubber and an odd wooden object on the floor and some overturned furniture. I like this one because Poirot has to uncover layers of family secrets in order to understand the victim before he can identify the killer and their ingenious methodology.

Catherine Aird is another author to have a go at the locked room story during a long-running series. His Burial Too (1973) is the sixth of her Inspector Sloan books and takes place over the course of a single day. A man is murdered in the bell tower of a church but the room’s door is blocked by rubble and when that is cleared it seems impossible that the murderer has managed to escape. This is a bit of a gothic melodrama in some ways but enjoyable.

Douglas Adams even penned a locked room detective story which melds with science fiction in The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul (1988). Adams’ hero, Dirk Gently, doesn’t feel he’ll have to do much other than listen politely to the ravings of his client when he is retained by a wealthy record industry executive who claims to be being stalked by a giant, scythe-wielding monster. Things take a dark turn for Gently’s finances (and his client’s health) when the client and his head are found several feet apart in a sealed and heavily barricaded room. When Gently belatedly takes his client’s ravings seriously, he uncovers the secret that gods who are no longer worshiped roam the earth as destitute beings and things get a bit fantastical from this point on so the book may not be accepted as a true example of the genre but I like it anyway.

Jeffrey Deaver‘s The Vanished Man (2003) is a modern take on the old theme in which Deaver’s quadriplegic forensic specialist Lincoln Rhyme is pitted against a vanishing criminal. The murder takes place in a New York Music school and sees the murderer run from the scene only to be cornered in one of the classrooms. This is quickly surrounded by police who enter the room after hearing a shot to discover an empty room. Rhyme and his partner Amelia Sachs are required to uncover the mysteries of the magic world to solve this crime.

I haven’t even started on the countless locked room short stories, like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s several Holmes adventures featuring locked room scenarios including my favourite The Adventure of the Speckled Band, let alone exhausted the novels in the genre but I’ll have to leave it here. One thing that pleases me is that even though I’ve read a lot of these stories there are more to savour in my future. One I haven’t yet read is Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo‘s The Locked Room but as it is number 8 in their 10 book series and I’m only up to book 2 it will be a while before I get there.

Do you have a favourite locked room mystery? Or are you able to solve them all so quickly they don’t hold your interest?

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Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise is hosting the crime fiction alphabet meme which requires the posting of an article relating to the letter of the week. Do join in the fun by reading the posts and/or contributing one of your own. You don’t have to write every week (as I have ably demonstrated by skipping H and K, though I may one day get back to them).

Review: The Copper Bracelet by Various Authors

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Title: The Copper Bracelet

Authors: (In order of chapter written) Jeffery Deaver, Gayle Lynds, David Hewson, Jim Fusilli, John Gilstrap, Joseph Finder, Lisa Scottoline, David Corbett, Linda Barnes, Jenny Siler, David Liss, P.J. Parrish, Brett Battles, Lee Child, Jon Land, James Phelan

Narrator: Alfred Molina

Publisher: Audible Inc and International Thriller Writers Inc [2009]

Length: 8hrs 38 minutes

Genre: Thriller

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My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A true edge of your seat thriller

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This book features the same band of war-criminal hunting ‘Volunteers’ who first appeared in The Chopin Manuscript, which, like this one, featured chapters written by different thriller writers. In the opening sequence Harold Middleton, leader of the Volunteers, and key members of his crew are nearly the victims of a hired assassin but, of course, they turn the tables and instead begin to learn that the copper bracelet which the assassin was wearing is far more than a piece of jewellery. The team must track down someone known as The Scorpion and prevent the world exploding into a new world war when a conflict between India and Pakistan is orchestrated by some nefarious types.

If Frederick Forsythe had written a season of 24 it would, I imagine, have turned out a bit like this book. It’s full of global politics, double-crossing assassins and the implausible high-tech gadgetry that a decent thriller must have. But, probably because each one is written by a different author all trying to leave their mark, the chapters each have their own story arc and cliff-hanger endings so it’s even more action packed than an average thriller. There are undoubtedly more twists and turns in the overall plot than would be the case if the story was written by a single author but it holds together well and there are surprisingly few loose ends left over. It’s not a particularly thought-provoking story but it didn’t lose my attention once.

As tends to be the way with thrillers the characters aren’t particularly well-developed, partly because they’re busy leaping out of the way of thermobaric bombs and partly because there are so darned many of them (that’s probably another side-effect of the multiple authorship). However the notion of a group of people tracking down the world’s war criminals is more clearly defined in this book and some of them were quite engaging in their brief appearances.

As he did with the first book Alfred Molina narrates brilliantly, taking the numerous characters of multiple nationalities in his stride. As someone who is a real fan of audio books I am pleased to see this audio only experiment continue. It’s quite clear the authors have fun collaborating as a change from their solo pursuits and I can’t imagine too many listeners wouldn’t experience a similar sense of fun with this classic roller-coaster of a thriller.

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As far as I can tell there are no plans for the book to be available in print but a version for the kindle is due in January 2010.

I reviewed The Chopin Manuscript, the first book in this audio-only series, earlier this year

Review: The Chopin Manuscript by various authors

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Title: The Chopin Manuscriptchopin manuscript

Author: Jeffery Deaver, Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline,Joseph Finder, David Hewson, James Grady, S. J. Rozan, Erica Spindler, John Ramsey Miller, David Corbett, John Gilstrap, Jim Fusilli, Peter Spiegelman, Ralph Pezzullo and P. J. Parrish

Publisher: Audible Inc and the International Thriller Writers Association [2007]

ISBN: N/A (Digital Download via audible.com)

Length: 6hours 30minutes (plus an hour of ‘extras’)

Narrator: Alfred Molina

American Harold Middleton is a music professor and former war crimes investigator who is called to Poland to assess whether or not a manuscript purported to be an original, previously undiscovered, Chopin is genuine or a fake. However, the man that Harold meets with is murdered soon after their meeting and it soon becomes clear that there is more to the manuscript than mere rarity.

For what is essentially a publishing gimmick the book is delightfully entertaining. The plot rollicks along with red herrings and shocking twists aplenty, just as a good thriller should. The only evidence that the story is written by 15 different people is that there are perhaps a few more characters than normal, but the upside to that is that there are more genuine surprises than you might expect with a book authored by a sole writer who has pet characters and plot threads. There are several themes which are carried throughout the book, such as the role of music, and these help to produce a surprisingly cohesive story.

None of the characters are particularly well developed, there are too many and the book too short for that, but as this is a book all about a fast paced plot that’s not a huge turnoff on this occasion. There was enough information to glean about Harold, his daughter Charlie, the evil Faust and a few of the other characters to engage my interest and keep me listening.

The book is narrated by actor Alfred Molina who does a superb job of handling the dialogue-rich story which features a couple of dozen characters.

My rating 3.5/5

Other stuff

The download version of the book that I listened to contained a half-hour interview with Jeffrey Deaver, Lee Child and David Hewson discussing the writing of the book. I found this quite enlightening. Following that are the winning entries in an International Thriller Writers competition which required people to take the first paragraph of The Chopin Manuscript and write a short story. The story by Colin Cotteril was particularly enjoyable and quite a treat to find tucked at the end of the audio file.

I couldn’t find any evidence that the book is available in print format although there is a version available for the kindle.

Review: The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver

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Title: The Broken Window (the 8th Lincoln Rhyme novel)

Author: Jeffery Deaver

Publisher: Hodder [original edition 2008, this edition 2009]

ISBN: 978-0-340-93724-2

No. of pages: 512

Lincoln Ryhme is a quadriplegic forensic specialist working with the New York Police. His cousin, Arthur, is arrested for a rape and murder that he did not commit. When Arthur’s wife asks Lincoln for help, he and the team of police and other specialists that Rhyme can command soon uncover a trail of identity theft that has ramifications for more than one supposedly solved crime. The scope of data that is created and kept about average citizens by governments and private corporations, and the damage that someone with evil intent and access to that data can do, is fully explored here.

There is a decent yarn buried in this book but I’m getting a little tired of 500+ page books that contain 300 page stories. It’s particularly ironic in the case of The Broken Window because one of its continuing themes concerns the concept of signal to noise ratio. A good third of this book is noise rather than signal. Partial threads of minimal interest (such as the one about a completely different case that took place in a previous book and will, presumably, return in a future one) are interruptions and never form a sensible part of the narrative.

The plot’s other problems stem from the factual inconsistencies. For example, the investigative team has access to some of the most sophisticated technology barely invented but had never heard of something called RFID which I happen to know has been around for decades and even in my little back water of the world moved from shadowy government applications to mundane things like tracking library books, recording road toll payments and making sure surgeons don’t leave implements inside their patients way back in the 1990′s. I only notice things like this when I’m not completely engaged by a story.

For fans of this series all the usual elements, and characters, are present. I’ve always enjoyed some of the minor players in Rhyme’s world, such as his acerbic aide Thom and the gruff Detective Lon Sellitto, and I enjoyed meeting up with them again. The solid forensic detail, including the whiteboard lists that regular readers would be familiar with, and the frenetic pace (the story takes place over only 2 or 3 days) are present in abundance. In this book some of Rhyme’s childhood is explored which I don’t recall happening before, and it was interesting to see part of Rhyme’s life before the accident that made him a quadriplegic.

I should have really liked this book. Identity theft and personal privacy in modern times are subjects I am very interested in both professionally and because they appeal to my inner conspiracy theorist. But somehow Deaver managed to suck some of the suspense and intrigue out of these subjects by including lots of unnecessary filler and I didn’t become nearly as engaged in the ‘what if’ as I would have liked. The last third of the book is a pretty good thrill and there’s lots of good stuff for the fans but it’s not my favourite Lincoln Rhyme novel.

My rating 2.5/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed at Ms Bookish

Author chat with Jeffery Deaver at Lesa’s Book Critiques