Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries is a collection of “impossible crime” mystery stories from the United States, some of which are set in a literal locked room. There are a good variety of tales with some well known authors and others which were new to me.

A recommended read for lovers of mystery and crime fiction.

Who doesn’t love reading a locked room mystery? It’s fascinating how each author in this collection thought of a unique and intriguing impossible murder scenario. And then quickly unveiled their witty solution. Surely, one or more of the fourteen tales within the Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries will tickle your inner armchair detective. Or, even better, delight your inner child with their cleverness.

That said, some of the tales’ solutions are just silly. In addition, a few of the plots require a bit more knowledge of customs only in existence between the two great wars than an average modern reader may possess to solve their mysteries. However, there is great value to such a large collection of locked room mysteries. 4 stars!

Thanks to American Mystery Classics and NetGalley for a digital review copy of the book.

A great anthology!
There are interesting introductions to each of the authors giving an insight into their careers.
The stories are classic locked room mysteries and takes the reader back to the early days of detective tales.
This book is a great start to read some of the golden age authors if you’ve not encountered them before.
The collection is a great read , and highly recommended for people interested in the golden age genre .
Thanks to NetGalley and Penzler Publishers.

Selected and edited by Otto Penzler, this anthology of 14 American impossible crime stories-seven from the 1930s and seven from the 1940s - has a roster of star authors. They run the gamut from Boucher to Woolrich, alphabetically, from Eberhart to Rawson, chronologically, and divide 2-12 by gender.

Many of the stories will be familiar to fans of the sub-genre, JD Carr being represented by The Third Bullet and Ellery Queen by the novella The House of Haunts/The Lamp of God, for instance. My personal favourites include Joseph Commings' Fingerprint Ghost and Clayton Rawson's delightfully-deft Off the Face of the Earth.

Mr Penzler's Introduction and introductory notes add great value to this useful and mostly entertaining volume. Newcomers to the world of the Locked Room will find it essential reading.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penzler Publishers for the digital review copy.

i knew I was going to love this book since i read the title as I love locked room mysteries and I loved Golden Age mysteries.
It's a fascinating anthology and all the stories are at high level. I knew almost all the authors and loved their stories.
This type of puzzles are always a challenge and I love how well worked on a logical side.
It could be used as a manual in a "how to write a whodunit" course
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries is an anthology of American crime fiction from the first half of the 20th century (1930 - 1949) collected and curated by crime fiction historian Otto Penzler. Due out 19th July by Penzler on the American Mystery Classics imprint, it's 508 pages and will be available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats.

This is a selection of 14 short works from very well known golden age authors from Craig Rice to Anthony Boucher, John Dickson Carr, Cornell Woolrich et.al. All the authors are relatively well known and will be familiar to most readers. Of the stories selected, only half were previously familiar to me (and provided a welcome re-read, I had forgotten most of the denouements). The detectives are selected from the authors' best known, and all of the stories are of a very high quality. Especially considering the addition of the information rich story notes, it's a very satisfying read overall.

In the introduction and story notes, we are gifted a multitude of plum trivia and factoids which are delightfully obscure and lift the whole to another level of wonderfully nerdy and edifying. Background such as Mr. Penzler provides really enhances the overall enjoyment of the stories themselves and I always (always!) look forward to reading his insightful commentary. This volume also provides guided reading notes for classroom or bookclub discussion which will come in handy for more formal discussion (or solo rumination).

Along with the classic and engaging stories, the background info and notes, and the discussion content, this is one of a series with coordinated cover art and layouts which provide a worthy service by protecting these early stories and presenting them to newer generations of readers.

Five stars. The stories themselves are solidly 3.5 - 5 stars, weighted toward the higher end of the scale. Despite being pretty firmly an e-reader prejudiced reader at this point (sorry, not sorry), I have acquired these in physical copies as well, and I love the way they look on my bookshelves. This would make a good selection for library acquisition, book club & classroom use, or plain reading enjoyment. I recommend the series (and its editor) very highly.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Otto Penzler does such a fantastic group curating these compilations of classic mysteries. Here are 14 of the best locked room stories, from stellar masters like Erle Stanley Gardner, Craig Rice, Ellery Queen, Cornell Woolrich, John Dickson Carr, and Anthony Boucher.

It's so lovely not to have to track these dpwn individually.

4.4/5

Advanced Reader's Copy was unable to download due to Netgallery error (you are unable to authorized this title).

An excellent collection of stories that are perfect for lovers of the Golden Age of Crime and later, supported by interesting and informative introductions to both the authors and the mystery.
A real treat!

If you are a fan of the golden age of mysteries stories then you will love this collection. And the fact that they are locked room mysteries makes this a double treat! I read this in one sitting and really hope for a volume 2. They could not have picked better short stories to include in this book. Thank you NetGalley for the advanced readers copy for review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penzler Publishers, American Mystery Classics for an e-galley of this collection of stories.

"Golden Age" is usually enough of a hook to reel me into any book with those words somewhere on the cover. This collection has the added incentive to try to solve "impossible crimes" which generally fall under the locked room genre. I have to say I was impressed with the list of authors when I first began to explore this book and enjoyed reading the stories. Stories such as these gave the author full control of whatever they wanted to give the reader in the form of clues and most of the stories included here were much too "original" for me to read the mind of the author and thusly solve the mystery. However, in most cases with this grouping I didn't object to having information withheld since I pretty much expected that to happen. There are tales woven around magic and even time travel in addition to the more usual body inside a room with no easily discernable exit. Try to solve these and you will come away with a wrinkled forehead and a "What the heck...." buzzing through your brain. All good fun.

In case you are curious about the authors and their stories, here is a list.
Elsewhen - Anthony Boucher; Whistler's Murder - Fredric Brown; The Third Bullet - John Dickson Carr; Fingerprint Ghost - Joseph Commings; The Calico Dog - Mignon G. Eberhart; The Exact Opposite - Earle Stanley Gardner; The Light at Three O'Clock - MacKinlay Kantor; The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem - C. Daly King; The Riddle of the Yellow Canary - Stuart Palmer; The House of Haunts - Ellery Queen; From Another World - Clayton Rawson; His Heart Could Break - Craig Rice; Murder Among Magicians - Manly Wade Wellman; and Murder at the Automat - Cornell Woolrich.

This was a great round up of short (although, some felt rather long) stories. I especially like the bits of biography before each story! Overall, an enjoyable collection for fans of the genre.

I always find it frustrating when book descriptions of short-story collections don’t include a list of the stories and their authors, so I’ll list them here in case the description isn’t updated at some point to include them:

Anthony Boucher: Elsewhere
Frederic Brown: Whistler’s Murder
John Dickson Carr: The Third Bullet
Joseph Cummings: Fingerprint Ghost
Mignon G. Eberhart: The Calico Dog
Erle Stanley Gardner: The Exact Opposite
MacKinlay Kantor: The Light at Three O’Clock
C. Daly King: The Episode of the Nail and the Reguiem
Stuart Palmer: The Riddle of the Yellow Canary
Ellery Queen: The House of Haunts
Clayton Rawson: From Another World
Craig Rice: His Heart Could Break
Manly Wade Wellman: Murder Among Magicians
Cornell Woolrich: Murder at the Automat

While these are supposed to be short stories, the Carr is almost novella length—and not really up to his usual standard, though it does include a drawing of the room, which I always enjoy in Golden Age tales. But the others are mostly entertaining takes on the fabled “impossible crime” subgenre. Murder at the Automat is a noirish take on murder, set in that brief bygone era when New York (and I don’t think much of anywhere else) offered food you could choose through a window after plugging in your coin. I enjoyed that one more for its atmosphere than the cleverness of its mystery.

A standout in this collection is Ellery Queen’s The House of Haunts, in which the mystery is the disappearance of an entire decrepit mansion on Long Island. This collection will help pass a pleasurable few hours.

While some stories stood out more than others, this was a great collection of short stories. I highly recommend this book!.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

I belong to a mystery short stories reading group that has read almost all of the annual "Best American Mystery Stories of the year anthologies that Otto Penzler has edited. As those, and really as most anthologies, this compilation of Golden Age/classic locked room mysteries offers entries that vary in quality. That said, some of the stories are old favorites while others are new to me and overall this is a fine collection that will appeal to veterans of the genre as well as to anyone else who wants the challenge of solving a mystery that on its surface seems impossible to solve. Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries may be best enjoyed on a cold evening sitting by a fire and wrapped in a throw -- so long as you keep the door unlocked.

Talk about delectable reading material...fourteen short mystery stories resplendent with oodles of poison, theft, spies, ghostly whispers, letters, candles and shadows and even a hypnotist! Each chapter contains a blurb about the Golden Age (the years between the two world wars) author who wrote that particular story, many well known and others you may not have heard of. I am always delighted to discover new-to-me authors and enjoy the often challenging hunt for their books. Several of the stories are literally locked room mysteries and others are impossible to solve, especially in the context of the age.

My favourite stories include "Elsewhen" by Anthony Boucher (I have yet to encounter a work by him which I did not enjoy) which involves the invention of a time machine and committing the perfect crime with it; the descriptive "Fingerprint Ghost" sleight of hand by Joseph Cummings (a new author to me); creative "The Calico Dog" by Mignon G. Eberhart which includes the intriguing statement, "The two of him has returned."; MacKinlay Kantor's brilliant "The Light at Three O'clock"; Daly King's locked room "The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem" and Stuart Palmer's "The Riddle of the Yellow Canary" with a particularly enticing first paragraph.

Golden Age readers ought to flock to this volume filled to the brim with fun, some stories more believable than others, but all delightful when read in the spirit in which they were written.

My sincere thank you to Penzler Publishers and NetGalley for the privilege of reading this terrific book! We as readers are so fortunate that editors including Otto Penzler revives stories of this era which would be a shame to lose.

An enjoyable anthology featuring a few of my favourite authors and a few new ones I’m glad to learn about. Especially enjoyed the little tidbits about the authors just before the start of their story.

I love US Golden Age mysteries - they are so much more film noir than the British ones. This is a brilliant collection - very readable, great authors - and in particular I thought the Ellery Queen story was absolutely fascinating and so well done.

Otto Penzler is the owner of one of the best mystery bookshops. It is located in New York City. However, those who live elsewhere can benefit from his curating as this excellent collection demonstrates.

Read stories by those who made the “Golden Age” golden. Some of the authors offering treats to readers in this collection include John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Earl Stanley Gardner. What they have in common is the convention of the ‘locked room.”

I often think of the Golden Age as British. Here though the Americans are at work.

Lovers of classic short stories may want to give this book a look.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penzler Press for this title. All opinions are my own.

I liked this book of short stories ( some shorter than others!) as it was like kthe British Library series but with american authors. Locked room mysteries which shocked and surprised. More variations on a theme I had not considered. Some were better than others tbut I think that is nornally the case with short story collections. A nice way of looking at stories of the same genre but which showed that every writer and way of looking at something is very unique.