The Locked Room Mystery Blog

Hello,

We are coming up on a year since I started the 55 Genres challenge and I am just about at the half way point. The current genre, a locked room mystery, is number 27 on the list. I have until Thursday to have this story written and still working on an idea.

A locked room mystery is a story in which a crime, typically murder, takes place under a set of seemingly impossible circumstances. A simple example is a person is found dead inside a room with only a single door, securely locked from the inside. How did the person die?

Some film examples of this would be I Robot. Here, Dr. Alfred J. Lanning's death looks like a suicide because the door to his room was locked. Detective Spooner thinks otherwise and investigates.

Law Abiding Citizen is another example. Clyde Shelton leaves the authorities baffled as he somehow pulls off elaborate murders while locked in solitary confinement.

A rea life example of this is the murder of Laetitia Toureaux. In 1937, she was found dead in a Paris Métro carriage. She entered the unoccupied metro car at one stop, and was found stabbed to death less than 90 seconds later at the next stop. Nobody was ever charged with the murder and the mystery has not been solved to this day. Now just to write a little more on the victim. An investigation found Laetitia lived a double life. Laetitia Toureaux worked during the day in a factory. However she also worked under a false name as an attendant at a dance hall with a seedy reputation, and frequently made discreet visits to the Italian Embassy. She had various lovers, leading police to suspect a crime of passion. However, the far-right terrorist group La Cagoule was also suspected. This was because upon further investigation, it was revealed she had been working as a spy, to infiltrate the group.

I try to think of something a bit different for each genre so I looked at that description "locked room mystery". Locked room is describing the location, obviously, and how this confined space adds to the impossibility of the crime. So my mind immediately wanted to move away from the locked room. The opposite being a wide open space. Somewhere with plenty of entrances and exits. Somewhere out in the open. I am inclined to set the story in a wide open field. As vast as any budget anyone filming this would allow for. Now, with a vague idea of a location, the open field, I now have to work on confining it some bit. What makes this open field a locked room.

This open field setting has reminded me of a good video on the horror genre which I will link here

One part I want to mention is this:

Extreme wide establishing shots can also draw attention to how alone and vulnerable the protagonists are and how remote the setting is. How many times have you seen shots like this in horror movies? They work so well to set the scene because they play on some of our most primal fears of isolation and defenselessness.

I quite like this and the example given in the video so I will spin this locked room mystery genre in a horror direction. With that I am going to insert an iconic horror character into the story. Something that can reside in an open field.

A vampire.

(Writer's note: I actually misspelled vampire as campire, and what with me saying it would reside in an open field, now I just want to write about a vampire camping. Maybe another genre)

Back to the locked room/open field. A vampire in the field but I still need to work on how the mystery part. The crime part. Murder is usually the case and the vampire seems likely to be the killer. So, how did the vampire kill/maim, an innocent victim?

Good generic question but I still need to add in the seemingly impossible circumstance. To tie the open field into it I am going to place the vampire in the field and seemingly trapped inside it. As we all know, vampires sleep in coffins to avoid sunlight. So...a coffin in the middle of an open field holds a vampire. With sunlight shining down on the closed coffin, and no way the vampire can open it without being burnt, how did it seemingly leave two puncture marks on a victim's neck far from the field?

Plot hole number 1 is, couldn't vampire just wait until night time and then get out to feed? This is solved by placing this field one of these fantastic places.

Another plothole I immediately spot is, why couldn't the protagonist or anyone else open the coffin? Or burn it? Or something to destroy the vampire. For this I will have to work on a reason the vampire cannot be destroyed. Perhaps there is a human antagonist stopping others from destroying the vampire. Think Mayor of Amity in Jaws. Another reason could be it is impossible to open or destroy the coffin due to magic, otherworldly powers.

One reason locked room mysteries are so much fun is the audience is invited to participate in solving the crime. A bad locked room mystery might throw up a sudden explanation with new evidence that the audience could in no way anticipated. So I have to watch out for this. Luckily there are some features of vampires that I believe most people know, such as holy water and garlic able to repel them, so I can use these in my mystery without them needing explanations.

I have also found a story about a mythological Irish character called Abhartach. Otherwise known as the Irish Vampire King. It's funny because it turns out there is a theory that Bram Stoker may have gotten inspiration for his famous Dracula creation from the legend of the chieftain Abhartach.

Now if you want to see Abhartach's grave:

That looks like an open field. So I might have to (possibly) follow Bram Stoker's footsteps and look into this tale of the Irish Vampire King. I will change it a little with the rocks removed and replaced with a coffin. Possibly being dug up in the story to reveal the coffin. I will also have to transport the story to a location with sunlight 24 hours a day.

But that is my direction I'm heading in. A pity about the short script is that I can't spend time delving into the mystery too much, I have to get into the puzzle and then to the solution as quick and as satisfying as possible. I think the question is intriguing enough. I just half to pull off the answer or else this genre has fallen apart on me.

Finally, just to add that what is a little funny on this is I actually have an unfinished locked room mystery comedy. It is a feature. I wrote it since Celine likes these type of stories. I half to get that finished and polished but I'm happy with the ending to it all. I think it's quiet satisfying. I think I could use it for this genre, get it into short script shape, and viola, short number 27 complete. But I wouldn't be happy with doing that. I like keeping that story in feature form. I think it's reveal will be more satisfying that way for Celine and any other reader. So I'm back to the Irish Vampire King story.

Huh, this is a long rambling blog. Next week I begin the new genre, Alternative History.

Thanks for reading.

Kevin