Clay Stafford talks with Author Tom Mead on “Writing Locked Room Mysteries”

Tom Mead interviewed by Clay Stafford

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I stumbled upon Tom Mead’s latest locked-room mystery from my friend Otto Penzler and immediately loved it. I knew I had to talk to Tom about it, as it was probably one of the best I’ve read in a long while. Tom and I got together electronically, me from Tennessee, U.S., and him from Derbyshire, U.K. The modern age of technology is not just fantastic for meetings such as this, but it also fosters a sense of global community, allowing us to get to know others face-to-face across continents. I was curious to know how, in the modern age, technology has affected what is known as the locked room mystery simply because these types of mysteries are fascinating intellectual puzzles, and modern forensics are straightforward (and often more quickly derived) facts. This interview ran long. Part of it has previously appeared in my monthly Writer’s Digest column, but the full interview, about four times the length of the Writer’s Digest version, constitutes our entire conversation. I learned so much from Tom that I felt other mystery writers might gain the same things I did by hearing Tom’s conversation in full. “Tom, for those unfamiliar with a locked room mystery, can you explain that to us?”

“Yes, absolutely. The term refers to a sub-genre of the classic puzzle mystery, or the whodunnit, emphasizing a seemingly impossible crime. So, in other words, a crime that physically could not have taken place. Hence, the imagery of the locked room. Locked room mysteries are a rarefied sub-genre because, by their nature, they are complex and convoluted creations. They’re structured like a puzzle, but there’s also an emphasis on the atmosphere and a kind of eeriness about them because there’s the appearance of something supernatural having taken place. But, of course, the solution is always rational and earthly. The locked room mystery became popular during the Golden Age of detective fiction between the World Wars. Many great authors tackled the genre, but my favorite is John Dickson Carr, the acknowledged master of the locked room mystery. I started writing locked rooms as a kind of tribute to him, and I look at them as a kind of literary magic trick, if you like. It’s all about misdirection and creating the appearance of the impossible.”

“Well, you had me trying to beat you at this mystery, and I have to say I did not.”

“Well, that’s good. That’s part of the fun, of course. A great thing about Golden Age detective fiction—something that appeals to me as a reader—is this idea of the intellectual game and the challenge to the reader. Ellery Queen was particularly good at that sort of thing and would often include a literal challenge to the reader, wherein the author would sort of step in, address the reader directly, and say, “All the clues are there. They’ve been hidden throughout the text for you to spot. Can you solve the mystery before the detective?” And so, I thought it would be fun to incorporate a literal challenge to the reader into my Spector mysteries. So again, it’s all part of the tribute to the Golden Age, but also having a bit of fun with the reader, and just playing up that puzzle aspect of the mystery.”

“Well, my wife said, ‘How is it?’ because I read a lot of books, and I said, ‘This is very good, but I am not sure how he’s going to pull this off,’ and I’m not giving anything away, because we’ve got a picture on the cover here, how did this person get in this boat? And that was the one that kept throwing me. And you don’t reveal until the very end, almost, how that happened. And so, I’m going, ‘Is he going to play fair? Is he going to answer how this boat shows up in here?’ So anyway, you did well in wrapping everything up.”

“Thank you very much. And yes, thank you for saying that about the boat puzzle. That was the one that I had the most fun with. It’s the most elaborate. In that respect, it’s a tribute to the Japanese locked room mystery or traditional Japanese mystery because there’s been a recent glut of translations of classic Japanese mysteries. I’ve had great fun delving into them. They are remarkably complex, even by the standards of Golden Age detective fiction, and some of the clever devices, techniques, tricks, and gimmicks that writers like Seishi Yokomizo have come up with are great and help to stimulate my imagination as a writer as well as a reader. I think that’s also partially a tribute to the Japanese mystery tradition.”

“You’ve been citing different cultures and countries. Locked room is global in every type of culture.”

“Yeah, I mean, the appeal of mystery fiction generally is universal, I think, and there have been numerous anthologies and collections of stories from all over the world that deal with this idea of the impossible crime. But there’s a concentration within Japan. The Japanese traditional mystery is known as Honkaku, which is a term that means Orthodox Mystery. So, in other words, a mystery with a fair puzzle that plays by the rules. And these days, there’s been a kind of resurgence in Honkaku mysteries, known as Shin Honkaku, or the New Orthodox. The popularity in Japan is massive, and several of these books are being translated into English. As someone who loves puzzle mysteries, I’ve enjoyed delving into the past and reading the classic Golden Age authors. My favorites are Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Frederic Brown, Helen McCloy, names like that, and people from the ‘30s to about the ‘50s. Also, alongside those authors, I’ve been reading classic Japanese and contemporary Japanese mysteries, which play by the same rule book where the focus is on a puzzle. It’s on identifying whodunnit, but also howdunnit. How could this impossible thing have occurred? As a writer, I think it’s all grist to the mill. I like to seek out these more diverse, perhaps unorthodox, or obscure, titles, and it’s a real joy to me as a reader and a writer.”

“You’re going to roll your eyes at this, but how in the world does one write a locked-room mystery? I don’t think I have the intelligence for it. Where do you start? Is it the ending, and you go backward? How does it work?”

“Now, that is a great question. To me, there’s no specific technique that I’ve hit upon. I’ve tried various approaches. But the idea is that you want every problem and every solution to be different. I should go about it differently each time. But I am a big fan of stage magic that I will come across in reading the book, hopefully, because my detective character—who’s very much a Golden Age pastiche of an amateur sleuth—is an old vaudevillian. I suppose he’s a retired conjurer from the London stage who has now turned his knack for unraveling impossible puzzles into the world of crime and detection. I grew up fascinated by stage magic, and I read a lot about magicians, how tricks are done, and the principles behind stage magic. So how, for instance, does a certain type of magic trick work on the brain, the part of the brain that is misdirected by a certain sleight of hand, and how does that sleight of hand work? I’ve read a few nonfiction works on that subject, and to be honest, the principles are very similar to mystery writing. I often liken writing mysteries to performing a magic show because, in both instances, you’ve got a performer guiding an audience's attention in a certain direction. In both instances, the trick's workings are in plain sight the whole time. But it’s about how you conceal them and ensure the audience doesn’t perceive them. In terms of plotting and writing, I suppose my general approach is the same as a magician’s. I will usually look at the effect that I want to achieve. It may be the case of coming up with an impossibility or a scenario that I think would be effective for the plot structure that I’ve got. Then, in some cases, it’s a question of working backward: how that trick can be pulled off via earthly practical means. This is an old stage illusionist’s principle of creating a gimmick that will achieve this effect. Then, at the other end of the scale, sometimes I will stumble across something, whether it be a trick or an illusion, an optical illusion, a misheard quotation, or a line of dialogue from something. It will stimulate something that I will then decide to try and develop into an impossibility. I’ve approached it from different angles, I suppose. Sometimes, I start with the trick itself, and I think about how I can incorporate that into my plot, and other times, I will have an unanswered question that I’ll need to devise my answer to.”

“Is there a specific type of sleuth that works well with locked room mysteries?”

“I suppose locked room mysteries are heightened by their nature. They’re non-naturalistic. They’re surreal. And there’s an emphasis on atmosphere. And I’ve already mentioned a sense of the eerie, the uncanny. I think the detective needs to be suitably larger than life, flamboyant, you might say, and theatrical, and these are the elements that I’ve distilled into my detective character, Joseph Spector. I think the amateur sleuth is a classic trope of the Golden Age. And a decidedly unrealistic, non-naturalistic one. I think the detective needs to reflect on the puzzle that you’ve set. With an elaborate and ornately contrived locked room mystery, you need a detective capable of these great flights of fancy and an air of performance about them. John Dickson Carr’s great detective was Gideon Fell, a boisterous kind of Falstaffian figure based on the author G.K. Chesterton. Then his other great detective was Sir Henry Merrivale, who was, if anything, even more flamboyant than Fell with a distinctive white suit and a penchant for practical jokes and the like. So, it is an almost cartoonish figure, but a figure that suited the puzzle framework that Carr created. A match made in heaven, I suppose.”

“Do certain types of plots lend themselves to locked room mysteries?”

“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I generally talk about the Golden Age mystery. The Golden Age usually refers to the decades between the World Wars, such as the ‘20s and ‘30s, when writers like Agatha Christie rose to prominence, and I’ve also talked about Ellery Queen. So, novels featuring a closed circle of suspects are often set in high society. So again, it’s quite a lofty scenario, not necessarily one that would be relatable to the average reader. Often with a country house setting like the one in Cabaret Macabre. The most important components would be the cast of suspects, the so-called closed circle of suspects. In other words, a set cast of characters whose identities are known from the outset so that you know that the murderer is lurking somewhere among that cast of characters. The setting is typically isolated. In Cabaret Macabre, it’s the House March Banks, which is a highly conventional English country seat. But if you think of Agatha Christie, for instance, you have the Orient Express, you have that kind of idea of a cast of characters in that single location, or Death on the Nile, of course, you have them on that river cruise. I think those kinds of scenarios are particularly appealing for creating locked room mysteries. My second book, The Murder Wheel, was set mainly in the backstage corridors of a fictional London theatre. For a locked room mystery, it’s fun to have it set within the constraints of a specific location for an impossibility. I think these are the kinds of ingredients that I like to employ.”

“When you’re talking about your study of conjuring, you tend to be the type who likes to look behind the scenes. How do you explain the popularity of locked-room mysteries? Is it the puzzle? Is it like the people who love crossword puzzles or someone trying to figure that out? You’ve got that specific demographic.”

“I think it is. Exactly as you say. The appeal lies within the puzzle first and foremost, but the Golden Age has an irresistible charm. I started trying to write Golden Age style, pastiche whodunnits as an exercise in escapism at the height of the Covid lockdowns here in the U.K. in 2020 and into 2021. So that was when I wrote Death in the Conjurer in draft, again, purely to keep myself entertained and amused by playing with the tropes and the conventions of the Golden Age mystery. However, regarding the puzzle and the locked room, I think the great writers of locked room mysteries had a great insight into human nature and human psychology, allowing them to play with the readers’ perceptions and expectations. As a reader, I appreciate an author who doesn’t dumb down the plot and who doesn’t simplify the plot. I like a very labyrinthine plot, which encourages you to play along and sets you an intellectual challenge. These are the things that I enjoy as a reader. I think, generally speaking, when I’m talking to people who are reading my books, and when I’m generally talking about locked rooms, it’s that sense of the writer having fun with you, the reader, and addressing ‘you, the reader’ directly and engaging you in this kind of elaborate performance.”

“Okay, let me ask you this. And no modesty here, okay? Why do more writers not write these? I have my suspicion, and I think I disclosed it at the beginning of this interview.”

“Locked room mysteries are, by their nature, complex undertakings. It would be best if you had a passion for the genre as a reader as well as a writer because it would be easy to set out and try and create a locked room mystery by numbers, but it wouldn’t have the same impact as a locked room that was constructed by somebody who knows the genre in and out. I think I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve had access to so many of the great titles from the past, and like I say, this influx of Japanese titles, translations of the French novels of Paul Halter—who’s another living legend of the locked room mystery. He’s a terrific writer and incredibly prolific. Speaking for myself, I’ve been able to read and distill all of that, generate my ideas from that, and combine it with the world of magic, which also fascinates me. But as to why more people don’t write the legitimate, locked room mystery style, I think other genres are perhaps less sophisticated in their construction and more commercially appealing—things like the conventional cozy mystery. Not to disparage the cozy mystery genre, but many titles are out there. There is a sheer glut of cozy mystery titles out there, and there are many recycled ideas out there. From a commercial perspective, selling a cozy mystery is easier because people know what to expect. They know how it will play out, whereas you are deliberately defying the genre's conventions with a mystery of the locked room. You are taking the established principles of the mystery, and you’re deliberately subverting them. And you’re making the work as unpredictable as possible because that’s the nature of it. I suppose that it’s more of a risk. It’s more of a balancing act because it can be a real disaster when it goes wrong. In a badly written locked room mystery, there’s much more to lose, whereas with cozy mysteries, there are many familiar elements for readers to latch onto. And there are so many long-running series out there that it’s perhaps easier to sell commercially. But again, not to disparage the cozy mystery because there are many cozy mysteries that incorporate locked room mystery elements. From a commercial point of view, I think the word cozy is a much easier sell than the locked room.”

“You’ve got to admit that writing and reading a locked room mystery take much more work because it’s not like you’re going to sit back in your leather chair and read this pleasurably. It’s like, okay, game on. Let’s go.”

“Exactly. I suppose it is perhaps more demanding, and therefore, the readers it will attract are those who love puzzles and trying to stay one step ahead of the detective or the author. The kinds of people who, like me, are fascinated by how tricks are done, who are, I suppose, as fascinated by that as they are by the tricks themselves. I mentioned a balancing act with locked room mysteries. It would be best if you had the reveal of the howdunnit to have a sense of satisfaction. You don’t want it to feel anti-climactic compared to the atmosphere and mystery you’ve constructed throughout the work. I suppose that’s what I mean when I say there’s more of a risk involved because you are essentially relying on this one gimmick to hold together the whole structure of the piece. You have to have faith that it will pay off, which is why I like to try different approaches within the same framework. I like to incorporate multiple puzzles, try to come up with puzzles that will complement each other and fit together rather like a kind of jigsaw, and try different types of illusions as well. You mentioned the boat illusion in Cabaret Macabre. There are conventional locked room mystery tricks, but then there are also identity tricks and things like that. There are tricks to do with alibis and what have you. I like to try to combine different types of things to maximize the satisfaction for the reader when all these tricks are unraveled. That’s the idea behind it.”

“As Spector would say, you’re building a house of cards.”

“Exactly.”

“For better or worse, it may turn out very well, or it may just completely collapse upon itself. You talked about the Golden Age quite a bit. Are locked-room mysteries era-dependent? Is it possible to write a locked-room mystery in today’s time with today’s forensic technology and law enforcement prowess?”

“Yeah, that’s a great question. I don’t think they’re dependent at all. There are many great examples of the locked room mystery throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, such as the post-Golden Age. But again, you must be more innovative and inventive to pull it off because information is so much easier today. With the Golden Age—which is what I love—you can rely on eyewitness accounts of events and things like that. These days, you’ve got CCTV. You’ve got an individual’s digital footprint to consider, and there are so many ways that the truth can be traced. In contrast, in the era that I write about, you were relying, I suppose, more on individual perception of an event or of an individual’s appearance—that kind of thing. To me, it’s closer to the principles of stage magic in that respect because when you’re in the audience at a magic show, you must rely on your own eyes and your perception of what’s happening around you. So that’s why I focus on that era. I’ve read many great works set far in the future, also some set in ancient Egypt or medieval times. Adam Roberts is an author who’s written some fascinating science fiction locked-room mysteries. They are fair playroom mysteries but set within this futuristic world he created. They’re quite a remarkable achievement, I would say. Likewise, I recently finished reading a Paul Doherty title. Paul Doherty writes historical mysteries, and he’s got a fantastic series set in the reign of King Richard II here in England. I think the principles are the same across the board, but I think if I’ve learned anything, it’s that the most fun and entertaining titles are the ones that are not afraid to break the rules or reinvent the rules of the genre.”

“As a wonderful writer of locked-room mysteries, what advice do you have for readers who wish to follow in your footsteps?”

“From my own experience, it was something that I did purely for my entertainment, and at the time I started writing, I was my audience, so I wasn’t writing for anybody else. If people want to write locked room mysteries, the same advice goes across the board. It’s to write the type of novel you enjoy reading, write the genre you like, write the period that most appeals to you, and create characters you enjoy reading and writing about. Those are the guiding principles that I’ve learned to live by. I think if people are looking to write murder mysteries, the best thing is to read a lot of murder mysteries, to focus on the type of mystery they love, to look at what makes it work, and to try and adapt those principles themselves.”

“Do what you love.”

“Precisely. It’s as simple as that.”

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Clay Stafford is a bestselling writer, filmmaker, and founder of Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference.
https://claystafford.com/

Tom Mead is a UK-based crime fiction author, including the Joseph Spector mystery series and numerous short stories. His debut novel, Death and the Conjuror, was selected as one of the top ten best mysteries of the year by Publishers Weekly. He lives in Derbyshire.
https://tommeadauthor.com/