It was really in the Golden Age, between the two world wars, when the pure detective story - of which the locked room mystery is really the ultimate form - became popular.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A lot of locked-room mysteries take time for you to pay attention and see the setup. They aren't thrillers, and they don't move along. The modern mystery story is really faster-paced, and I think modern readers tend to prefer seeing something happening on every other page.
When a locked-room mystery doesn't work, the solution makes you groan, and the book gets hurled across the room.
John Bellairs's young adult mysteries were great - and super creepy.
Mysteries include so many things: the noir novel, espionage novel, private eye novels, thrillers, police procedurals. But the pure detective story is where there's a detective and a criminal who's committed a murder and leaves clues for the detective and the careful reader to find.
I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.
We've always been fans of a good mystery; we think all kids are, and there weren't any good mysteries out there these days for kids, so that's why we decided to do them.
It's a thrilling world, and people really like stories about secrets, which is the essence of a spy drama.
My manager sent me the first two scripts for 'True Detective,' and I just thought they were so interesting and that the world they were depicting was so titillating to me.
In a single lifetime, roughly from 1865 to 1930, one finds the pioneering and patterning works of modern fantasy, science fiction, children's literature and detective fiction, of modern adventure, mystery and romance.
To this day, I've never figured out a single locked-room mystery.