A summer camp. A cruise. A snowed-in lodge. A moving train. A closed highway rest stop. What do all of these things have in common?
Murder!
No matter where the setting, locked room mysteries are a wanna-be detective’s dream. As a reader, you get the chance to solve the unsolvable crime. You have to get to know the characters, make connections between past and current events, and follow all the clues to the logical conclusion. I feel like Sherlock Holmes whenever I pick one up!
Here are some page-turning, locked room mysteries that will make the detective in you come out, too:
This post may contain affiliate links through which I make a small commission when you purchase something – at no additional cost to you! See the Disclosure page for more information.
“>No Exit by Taylor Adams
College student, Darby Thorne has to drive home for Christmas break during one of the worst snowstorms Colorado has seen in a while. When the roads become impassable, Darby pulls off at a rest stop, hoping to wait it out in some warmth. But what she sees there puts a chill in her bone. There is a little girl locked in a cage in the back of a van. Darby has to figure out which of the other waiting travelers owns that van and how to get the little girl, and herself, out of that rest stop to safety.
“>The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
A group of friends book a remote lodge in the Scottish Highlands for their yearly New Year’s vacation. This year, one of them ends up dead. Which one of them is responsible? Trapped by a snowstorm, the rest of the party have to wait it out while they sit and reminisce about their past and try to figure out who had reason enough to kill.
“>The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
Lo Blacklock is a journalist who was asked to write a review on a new luxury cruise line for a travel magazine. During her week-long cruise, she sees a passenger get thrown off the ship. The problem is, no passengers are missing. Still, Lo knows what she saw. Who was thrown off the ship? And which one of the passengers did it?
“>Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Queen of all locked door mysteries, Christie has written many including And Then There Were None and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. One of the most famous, however, is Murder on the Orient Express. This book has been made into a movie at least four times since 1934. In this book, her famous detective Hercule Poirot is on a luxury train ride back to England. During this trip, the train is stopped by a huge snowdrift and while they are waiting for help, millionaire Samuel Ratchett is found murdered in his compartment, stabbed multiple times. It is the job of Poirot to figure out who on the train would want to do him harm.
“>The Last Time I Lied Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager
This locked room mystery takes a different twist as the mystery actually happened 15 years ago when Emma attended Camp Nightingale as a teenager. Back then, her three roommates disappeared from their cabin in the middle of the night. No one ever found out what happened to them and Emma has been haunted by that tragedy ever since. She is now returning as a camp counselor, she thinks ready to get over what happened in the past. But she finds she can’t let go of what happened to her friends and she begins to unravel what really happened.
