One of my favorite takes on the locked room mystery is the island mystery, where characters are trapped on an inaccessible island with a murderer and must solve the mystery to save themselves.
The Rising Tide by Ann Cleeves
For 50 years, a group of friends has reunited on Holy Island every five years. This year, though, one among them announces he’s writing a tell-all novel. The next morning, he is found dead in his room. Detective Vera Stanhope arrives to investigate and begins probing at another death within the group, 45 years prior.
The Club by Ellery Lloyd
Island Home is set to be the most luxurious spot yet in a string of lavish resorts, built on an island off the coast of Britain and only accessible via causeway at low tide. It’s a getaway only for the most elite A-listers. But what should be the grand opening party of the year turns into a scandalous murder mystery as the bodies begin piling up.
The House of Lost Horizons by Chris Roberson
In this graphic novel set in 1926, paranormal investigator Sara Jewell arrives on a private island off the coast of Washington for an auction of occult items, only to discover that there has been a murder. Trapped on the island with other buyers, the collection owner, and apparently a murderer—along with a raging storm that has also knocked out all communication—Sarah and associate Marie Thérèse investigate.
The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
Six members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club gather at an abandoned island off the coast of Japan, in the disorienting Decagon House, to investigate a series of unsolved murders. But there’s also a murderer among them, and as the students begin to die it’s a race against time. Meanwhile, two club members who did not go to the island receive mysterious letters and begin to investigate a long-ago mystery with ties to the present-day.
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
At what should be a fabulous wedding on an island off the coast of Ireland with a dark history, a murderer strikes. Foley teases out the identity of both the victim and the murderer slowly, ramping up the tension, as guests and staff alike uncover hidden secrets.
The Secrets of Winter by Nicola Upson
It’s 1938 and Scotland Yard detective Archie Penrose and his mystery-writer friend Josephine Tey have been invited to a fundraising event at a Cornish castle on an island. As the tide floods the causeway and cuts off the island, a guest is found murdered. Can Tey and Penrose catch the killer, and how does it connect to a case Penrose handled in 1920?
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Where would a list of island mysteries be without this original classic? Ten strangers arrive at an island house-party, only to begin dying in the same pattern as a nursery rhyme that is included in each room of the mansion where they are staying. Who summoned them, who is murdering them, and will anyone survive? If you love this premise, check out these other novels that modernize and adapt Christie’s premise: The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji; Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney; They All Fall Down by Rachel Howzell Hall; and Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo.
~ posted by Andrea G.
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