The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes

This was my second attempt at reading this book. I'd started it last year when on holiday in Boston - I'd happened to see it in a shop and although I wanted to read it, I didn't want to buy it (it was too expensive for one thing, plus I didn't think it would stand up to multiple readings and anyway I didn't have room in my cases to take it back with me). So I managed to borrow it from the library there and made a start on reading it. I didn't get it finished before I had to leave, so when I knew I would be returning to Boston, I made sure to borrow it from the library again so that I could finish it off! Thankfully, this time, I managed to finish it.

As the title says, it's a collection of short stories which are all either locked room show more mysteries or impossible crimes. I've never read these kind of tales before but as I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Creek (which is full of the same type of thing just in a television programme rather than a book) I thought I'd give them a try. There's 30 different stories in here and they're all varying lengths, so some are just a couple of pages while others are a good 20+ pages long. They also vary in age, setting and scenario. As a result, it is very much a mixed bag but that's exactly what I'd expect from a collection, there's generally something for everyone in there. It's more of a taster than anything.

I actually found that the majority of the stories were quite good; there were a few that I didn't enjoy as much as the rest and one or two that were actually quite a struggle to get through. Some were quite easy to work out, others less so. The Editor had given a little introduction to each author at the start of each story which was quite nice, although I found a lot of it seemed to assume that the authors and magazines that were mentioned would be familiar to the reader but I'd never heard of the majority of them. Although it's possibly not the kind of thing that most people would equate to holiday reading, I think a short story collection works quite well because it's easy to keep putting down. On the whole, I think people who like impossible crimes and locked room mysteries would enjoy this book. show less