Supper Sleuths
Supper SleuthsThis sub-genre was really popular in the Golden Age of mysteries (1920s & 1930s). Simply defined it is “any crime committed in such a way that it seems impossible to determine how it was done.” John Dickson Carr (aka Carter Dickson) was the master of this type of detective story. Carr’s very own favorite novel is Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908) which contains an ingenious plot but has an absurd detective and appears silly when compared to more modern writers.It is highly recommended that you read “The Locked Room Lecture” in chapter 17 of Carr’s The Three Coffins (aka The Hollow Man, 1935). Although the lecture is interrupted in the story by new turns of plot, it sums up all the methods of murder in a room where the sole occupant appears to be the victim.
“This is the detective story in its most ‘intellectual’ form (along with the unbreakable alibi and the least likely suspect), a challenge by the author to the reader, and is therefore a matter of taste, especially for readers who prefer suspense or fast action or literary critics who insist that character traits are more important that ratiocination. That should not imply that the locked-room murder, if well done, lacks these elements.”
The short story format is very popular for this sub-genre because when the puzzle is the point it is harder to stretch the plot into the size of a novel. There is a huge selection in short stories, and many anthologies are listed in this category.
Credit and much thanks goes to Beth Radcliffe for her research and compilation for this list.
The following is a list of titles by author. Whenever possible, the series is in order of publication date. This is may not be an exhaustive list, so please let us know if you feel that a title should be here. Please read one or more titles, and come prepared to discuss your impressions of them with the group.