The top ten locked-room mysteries

Adrian McKinty's novels include Dead I Well May Be, Fifty Grand, Falling Glass, and the Detective Sean Duffy novels:The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street), and the newly released In the Morning I'll Be Gone. Born and raised in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, McKinty was called "the best of the new generation of Irish crime novelists" in the Glasgow Herald.

He named his top ten locked-room mysteries for the Guardian, including:

The King Is Dead by Ellery Queen (1951)

King Bendigo, a wealthy munitions magnate, has been threatened by his brother Judah, who announces that he will shoot King at midnight at his private island residence. King locks himself in a hermetically sealed office accompanied only by his wife, Karla. Judah is under Ellery Queen's constant observation. At midnight, Judah lifts an empty gun and pulls the trigger and at the same moment, in the sealed room, King falls back, wounded with a bullet. No gun is found anywhere in the sealed room and the bullet that wounds King came from Judah's gun – which didn't actually fire. Good, huh?

Read about the other entries on the list.

Visit Adrian McKinty's blog.

See McKinty's list of the 10 best lady detectives.

The Page 69 Test: Fifty Grand.

--Marshal Zeringue