"Crime Impossible" has a history as old as mystery stories.The gothic reasoning stories popular at the end of the eighteenth century contained a large number of stories about suspected haunted houses, although the results were all related to secret passages.For example, Ann Radcliffe (Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823, British novelist) "The Mysteries of Udolpho" (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794), even Hoffmann (ETA Hoffmann, a From 776 to 1822, "Mademoiselle de Scudari" (Mademoiselle de Scudari, 1819), a German romantic novelist, is also out of this category, but the latter has already begun to take the shape of a secret room murder.

The first authentic locked room murder story that does not rely on secret passages belongs to Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873, Irish writer) "A Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess" in The Dublin University Magazine, November 1838—despite the title There is the word "Secret Way" on it.To this day, Le Fanuu is best known for horror novels such as Uncle Silas (1864), which includes many ideas for locked-room murders, as well as vampire tales (Camilla "Portrait" (Carmilla, 1872).In Le Fanu's work, there is only one detective with a passion for solving crimes.But this was soon completed by Poe in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (Graham's Magazine, April 1841), which laid the foundation for the detective story. The basis of the story, and the plot is terrifying and treacherous, it is an out-and-out reasoning case in a secret room.

Several other locked room murder stories appeared in the mid-nineteenth century, perhaps the most famous being Wilkie Collins' (1824-1889, the ancestor of the British mystery novel) "The Weird Bed" (A Terribly Strange Bed, Household Words, April 1852).The story was published by the great British writer Dickens. I am a little surprised that Dickens has never created a story about "impossible crime", because he must be able to write great works.Overall, mid-Victorian Crime Impossible retains a touch of Dogothic quality that, while innovative at the time, seems trite today.That's why I haven't reprinted those stories—and because most of them can be found in the anthologies of the original authors.The only one I have compiled is Thomas Berry Eddy's "Mad Men", which is more original and modern than any other novel of the time.

Impossible crime stories really took off in 1892, when two major works were published in a whirlwind.The first is The Big Bow Mystery (1892) written by Israel Zangwill (Israel Zangwill, 1864-1926, British Jewish playwright and novelist). Serialized in London's Evening Star newspaper (The Star).This is the first full-length novel with the theme of murder in a locked room.Zangwill has conceived for many years before writing, and the author's creativity and talent are fully revealed in the novel, and the secret passages and other mechanisms are gone.This is a crime story purely out of wits, which can only be deciphered with equal skill and reasoning ability.During the serialization of the novel, readers have submitted their own solutions—but none of them are correct—the excitement and charm of the secret room reasoning can be seen.Another publication was "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Sherlock Holmes (February 1892, The Strand's Magazine).The popularity of Sherlock Holmes is well known. The author Conan Doyle loves unusual criminal methods, and the reason why Sherlock Holmes's stories stand out is that all the criminal methods in it are very strange, so the reasoning ability of Sherlock Holmes pose a great challenge.Holmes has no interest in ordinary crimes, but strangely, the number of impossible crimes in the series is very small, strictly speaking, there are only two, the other is "The Problem of Thor Bridge" (The Problem of Thor Bridge, a The Strand's Magazine, February 1922), about a murder with no weapon in sight.

The Bow and The Spotted Tape came out at a time when popular fiction magazines were blossoming, opening the door to impossible crime stories.Late Victorian and Edwardian writers loved impossible crimes, and Conan Doyle went a step further with the classic story "The Story of the Lost Special" (Stander Magazine, August 1898), The content is that the train literally disappeared from the track.Meade (LT Meade, 1854-1914, Irish female writer) in her crime novels, provides more bizarre ways to solve the case, especially those collected in "Master of Mysteries" (A Master of Mysteries, 1898 ) stories.

Impossible Crime Story's next major breakthrough came in 1905.American writer Jack Futrell serialized "Escape from Cell Thirteen" (October 30 to November 5, 1905) in The Boston American and challenged newspaper readers to Let's see who can come up with the right way to solve the case.The story takes Mathematics Professor Van Dusen, who is known as a thinking machine, as the main character. This man has super reasoning ability, and even the most bizarre cases can be easily solved in his hands.In the first story, Van Dusen set himself a challenge: to escape from a prison that is heavily guarded and guarded at all times.His escape method is still one of the most brilliant classics in the history of fiction.Over the next six years, Futrill wrote dozens more stories about thinking machines, not all of which made it into book form.These stories range from objects disappearing from a house to cars disappearing from the road for no apparent reason, or even entire houses disappearing.Unfortunately, Futrill died in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic.

Edgar Wallace (Edgar Wallace, 1875-1932, a reasoning writer known as the "King of Thrillers" in Britain) also published the ingenious "Four Righteous Men" in 1905. (The Four Just Men).Wallace self-published the book, and purposely left it without the end, offering the reader a prize to solve a murder in a locked room guarded (but not touched) by the police in broad daylight.I also want to know that Wallace used many secret chamber techniques in his novels and stories. The Crimson Circle (The Crimson Circle, 1922), in which a man was poisoned to death by gas in a secret chamber, should be regarded as the most brilliant part of it.

The publication of The Four Righteous Men was followed by the best-selling secret mystery The Mystery of the Yellow Room (1908).The author is Gaston Leroux (Gaston Leroux, 1868-1927, a famous French journalist and writer in the early twentieth century) - his work is known as "The Phantom of the Opera" (The Phantom of the Opera, 1911) is best known—still in print today—and is one of the most sophisticated locked-room mysteries ever written, in which famous detective Frederick Lasan and newspaper reporter Joseph Hulda race to solve the case , adding a lot of fun. In 1911, as soon as GK Chesterton (Chesterton, 1897-1957, a pioneer of British reasoning literature) published "The Innocence of Father Brown" (The Innocence of Father Brown), it will not Possible crimes pushed to the top.The stories in this book have previously caused a sensation in "The Story-Teller" (serialized since September 1910). Arthur Spergen, editor of The Storyteller, admired Chesterton's work very much. He praised: "The plots are brilliant and tightly linked. I believe they will become the most outstanding detective stories of this century." Brown Many of the stories in the five-part Father's Detectives series, notably The Incredulity of Father Brown (1926), are improbable crimes.

Another brilliant character who appeared at the same time as Father Brown was Melville Davidson Post's Uncle Abner, although the collection "The Case of Uncle Abner" lasted until 1918 It was only published in 2011, but the story has actually been published in The Saturday Evening Post and other magazines since 1911.Although the miraculous murders are outstanding, it is a pity that the number of articles is too small.This collection is a reprint of "The Murder at Dudolph" recommended by David Rivek, guaranteed to be a great selection. Chesterton and Poster were active during World War I and into the 1920s, a period in which fewer improbable crime stories were produced than might have been expected, although the form had matured so that even Woodholm P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975, British novelist, lyric poet, and playwright) can follow the same pattern and write a well-reviewed satirical work "The Lessons of Detective Ochs" (The Education of Detective Oakes, published in the December 1914 issue of Pearson's Magazine), in which a man is bitten to death by a poisonous snake and dies violently in a locked room.

The creator of Philo Vance, Ssvan Dine (Ssvan Dine, 1888-1939, American writer and art critic), wrote in "The Canary Murder Case" (The Canary Murder Case, 1927) and later novels breathed new life into the impossible crime.Agatha Christie also put her witty creative power into this genre. Several stories in "13 Problems" (The Thirteen Problems, 1927) such as "The Blue Geranium" (The Blue Geranium) , "The Storyteller" in December 1929), Miss Marple resolved seemingly impossible crimes with her quick brain power. However, the real "impossible crime" master, John Dixon Carr, has not jumped onto the stage until this time.Carr began writing while a student at Harverford College in Pennsylvania, publishing in the school magazine, The Harverfordian.His third story, "The Shadow of the Goat" (The Shadow of the Goat, serialized in November-December 1926), was his first secret room mystery story, and was also the first story of Inspector Henry Banklin. (Henri Bencolin) official appearance.This brilliant work includes plots such as disappearing from the secret room and being killed in the heavily guarded house.Carl's writing skills were developed at a young age—he was only twenty when they emerged.Later, he expanded the "Grand Guignol" (Grand Guignol) in the Banklin series (serialized in "Harvey Man" from March to April 1929) into his first novel "Night Walking". (It Walks By Night, 1930).

Carr wrote more than fifty impossible crime novels, plus countless short stories, over the next forty years.I cannot list them all here, but I must point out a few.Perhaps the most classic of these is The Hallow Man (1935), also published under the title (The Three Coffins).In 1980, Edward Hawke held a poll by 17 mystery fiction experts, and in the end it was this novel that came out on top.There are two impossible murders in the story - one is a death in a locked room and the other is a death on a snow-covered street with no footprints in sight.This book takes Carl's most famous detective, Dr. Gideon Fell (Dr. Gideon Fell) as the main character. Carl insists on stopping at the exciting point of solving the case, and makes Fell talk about the secret room murder and various murder methods at length. .This work and that speech later became classics in the history of crime fiction. Carr has three other novels that have cracked into the top ten picks of experts, (The Crooked Hinge, 1938) is also the fourth novel with Gideon Fell as the main character. A murder case in which only the victim's footprints were left in the sand has been solved perfectly.He published under the pseudonym Carter Dickson (The Judas Window, 1938), which was also mentioned in the preface by David Rewick.I personally rank it as one of Carr's best books - because it's bold, high-five and addictive, featuring detective Henry Merrivale.Another rare masterpiece is The Ten Teacups (1937), also known as Peacock Feather Murders, which ranks tenth on the expert list.In fact, some of the rarest impossible murders were included in Henry Merrill's detective series, such as in The Plague Court Murders (1934), The Unicorn Murder (The Unicorn Murders, 1935) and the murders in the books The Red Widow Murders (1935). Carr also brought the idea of ​​impossible crimes to life in a number of short stories, some of the best in "The Detective Office," which features newcomer Colonel March.I am republishing one of the stories, "Rainscreen," in this book.Carr's novella The Third Bullet (1937), perhaps the best example of technique to mislead the reader, features three bullets fired from a secret room, each fired from a different gun , However, there were only two people in the room, but the other person besides the deceased did not have a murder weapon in his hand. Readers would probably think that Carl's production is so abundant and his ideas are endless, no one will dare to kick the library to write stories about impossible crimes.In fact, the situation is just the opposite. Instead of monopolizing the market, Carr has stimulated the vigorous development of crime fiction.The 1930s were the golden age of miraculous crime, and Ellery Queen—the detective's name and the author's pseudonym (by Frederic Dannay and Mann) Manfred Lee (shared by two cousins) - provided two excellent secret room mystery works: "The Chinese Orange Mystery" (The Chinese Orange Mystery, 1934) and (The Door Between, 1937).Magician writer Clayton Rosen created the character of the magician, Melinty, who specializes in impossible crime stories and has written some of the best. "Death from the Top Hat" is his first work, and the whole story involves a large group of magicians.Rosen's other novels include (The Footprints on the Ceiling, 1939), The Headless Lady (1940), in which someone escapes from a locked room with two electronically controlled locks, and (No Coffin for the Corpse , 1942).Rosen, Dana and Carl used to compete against each other, challenging each other to write the most bizarre impossible crime stories.Once, Carl asked Rosen to figure out how to make a person disappear after entering a phone booth. That story "Vaporization" is also included in this collection. Another close friend of Ellery Quinn, Anthony Boucher (Anthony Boucher, 1911-1968, American writer and book critic), although he failed to write the secret room reasoning work he was satisfied with, but " Nine Times Nine (1940) and The Case of the Solid Key (1941) are still creative masterpieces.Still, when it comes to creativity and bravado, you'll be hard-pressed to beat the author whose pen name is Hake Talbot (1900-1986, enigmatic American writer).In the early 1940s, Tabert wrote two novels that were as technically plotted as Carr's and as boldly innovative as Rosen's: The Hangman's Handyman (1942) and Rim of the Pit (1942). 1944).Before finally revealing the mystery, the author uses all kinds of strange and chaotic tricks to make readers completely confused, especially the latter.If I tell you readers that one of the books is about a man who is cursed and his body immediately rots; How sensational are the two novels.Professor Douglas Greene, a renowned historian of crime fiction, said: "Lim is one of the best mystery novels ever written." The Wheel Spins (1936) by Ethel Lina White (1877-1944, British writer and poet) is also a masterpiece. The woman disappeared out of thin air in the moving train, but readers are probably more impressed by the film version of "The Lady Vanishes" (The Lady Vanishes), which was remade in 1938. It's a pity that most people don't remember Clyde B. Clason (Clyde B. Clason, 1903-1987, American writer, who only spent five years creating mystery novels in his life), he wrote a series of novels. Predominantly is the work of the historian and amateur detective Professor Theocritus Westborough, whose work is fortunately gradually being republished.Seven of the novels were impossible crimes, the best of which was The Man From Tibet (1938), in which a man is locked in a room full of Tibetan exhibits, But he suffered a heart attack and died. The British composer Bruce Montgomery (Bruce Montgomery) also published his reasoning creation under the pseudonym of Edmund Crispin (1921-1978, the comedy master in the history of reasoning), writing Jovis Gervase Fen, the Oxford professor and literary critic's amateur sleuth.His first case, The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944), was a locked room murder. The Moving Toyshop (1946) is perhaps the best of all, in which an entire toyshop disappears without a trace. Lawyer writer Michael Gilbert (Michael Gilbert, 1912-2006, British writer) except for helping the well-known reasoning writer Raymond Chandler draw up the will, his creative career has never been a crime The writing of "Close Quarters" (Close Quarters, 1947) is also the debut of Inspector Hazelrigg.It wasn't long before brothers Peter and Antony Shaffer co-wrote a stunning mystery mystery novel, The Woman in the Closet, under the pseudonym Peter Antony. Woman in the Wardrobe, 1951).On the whole, however, secret room mysteries seemed to fall out of fashion in the 1950s, only to make a comeback in the 1960s and 1970s. Two writers, Bill Plotini and Edward Hawke, have contributed to contemporary reasoning.Prozzini is a versatile writer who has written novels and stories across several genres (science fiction, mystery, westerns, and horror), but he is best known for his series featuring the unknown detective, which includes several Murder in a locked room, Hoodwink (1981), the first in a series, won the author the Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America (Private Eye Writers of America). Writer Award).There are two locked room murders in the story, and the one in which the deceased was hacked to death with an ax in the locked room is the most brilliant. Scattershot (1982) takes it a step further, with three impossible crimes in the story: a man is assassinated in a closed car, a man is shot dead in a cabin under close surveillance, and a man is shot dead under the watchful eye of a guard. The ring in the room was stolen! Although Edward Hawke also wrote novels, he is actually a master of short stories. Since he began to publish his works in 1955, he has written more than 800 works, many of which are impossible crimes.Hawke wrote a series of works solely on impossible crimes, with New England physician Sam Hawthorne dictating the murders he encountered in the early 1920s and 1930s (three or four a year)!The series is still running in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (EQMM), and earlier published stories have been compiled into a single book, Diagnosis: Impossible Crime, which I include in this collection A more recent story. However, Hawke did not limit the impossible crimes to this series. He also created several different series at the same time, and there are several stories in which a miraculous case is likely to appear.His first series lead was Simon Ark, in the story "The Man From Nowhere" (Detective Magazine, June 1956), a The man was stabbed to death in the snow, but no footprints could be found around him.In the story "The Spy Who Walked Through Walls" by Agent Rand (EQMM, November 1966), classified blueprints disappeared from the office Fly; in Nick Velvet's story "The Theft of the Bermuda Penny" (EQMM, June 1975), a man jumps out of a speeding car Disappeared, yet his seat belt was still fastened!There is also "Captain Leopold and the Impossible Murder" (EQMM, December 1976), featuring Leopold, in which a man drives a But the man squeezed into the car formation was actually strangled to death.In "The Vanished Steamboat" (EQMM, May 1984), starring Ben Snow, a man is shot dead in his cabin trapped in a snowstorm, and Within a hundred miles, there was no one else except another person who was asleep.Hawke's talent seems to know no bounds, and I believe he will be able to create more stories about impossible crimes in the years to come. Many writers besides Plotcini and Hawke have turned to impossible crimes.Michael Innes (Michael Innes, 1906-1994, British writer and professor of literature) tried the library murder case "Appleby and Honeybath" (Appleby and Honeybath, 1983) skill.Kate Wilhelm (born 1928, American writer)'s Smart House (1989) explores the issue of computer security with the elevator murder case and the sauna drowning case.In Vendetta (1990), Michael Dibdin (born 1947, British writer) puts detective Zen's wit to the test as he defuses heavily guarded, A murder occurred in the fortress area where cameras were set up everywhere.And Paul Doherty (Paul Doherty, born in 1946, a prolific British writer) who is good at writing historical mystery novels also has many novels obviously influenced by Karl, such as "Satan in St Mary" (Satan in St. Mary's, 1986) murder in a church; in The Angel of Death (1989) a murder scene in full view of someone being killed but no one seeing the murder weapon; Michael Clynes ) under the pseudonym The White Rose Murders (1991), about someone murdered in a secret chamber in the Tower of London; he also wrote Murder in Broad Daylight under the name Paul Harding. (By Murder's Bright Light, 1994), in which an entire ship simply disappears inexplicably. And we can't leave out David Rivek's character, Jonathan Crick, who has solved some of the weirdest cases on television. I believe that the impossible crime stories that come out in the future will be as good as the works in this book.If this collection inspires readers, I strongly recommend you to read Locked Room Murders and Other Impossible Crimes (1991), edited by Robert Adey, The content contains detailed research materials and bibliography.Here are other anthologies that include "impossible crimes" that are sadly out of print: The Locked Room Reader (1968), edited by Hans Stefan Santesson; "Isaac Asimov (1920-1992, Russian-American writer, universally recognized master of science fiction), Waugh (Charles G. Waugh) and Greenberg (Martin Harry Greenberg) edited " Tantalizing Locked Room Murders (1982); All But Impossible!, edited by Edward Hawke (1981); Chamber of Secrets, edited by Greenberg and Plotcini (Locked Room Puzzles, 1986); Death Locked in, edited by Douglas Green and Robert Yardy (1987); and Jack Adrian and Robert Yardy Dee co-edited The Art of the Impossible (1990).I try not to select too many stories from the above collections to avoid excessive repetition. Although these books are out of print, some good works are extremely waiting to be republished. I hope readers' exploration is not an impossible wish.