The Lure of the Locked Room – Maggie’s Picks for the best Halloween Reads!
To me, nothing is scarier than reality, especially 2020 reality. While I can blissfully disdain most tales of ghosts, ghouls and other things that go bump in the night, I find it much harder to be blasé about the terrifying things people do to each other. Which is why my perfect scary read is a good thriller, and the last few years have delivered a lot of those. And since we are all by virtue of the unique circumstance of a global pandemic, locked in our own homes, I thought the ideal Halloween read just might be a locked room mystery. Here are some recent releases I’ve loved:
2020:
One by One by Ruth Ware
A luxury ski resort in the French Alps is the setting for this NY Times bestseller about getting snowed in with murderous co-workers. Snoop, a company with a successful music app, has its top executives on a corporate retreat when an avalanche strikes, isolating them. The power goes out, the phones don’t work – and then people start dying.
Too often in a locked room thriller an author tries to create a 1950s style environment where our modern technology doesn’t work and people find themselves in a man versus the elements scenario. I understand the lure of this plot device – especially in novels where it would make criminal activity easier to enact and get away with – but what I truly appreciated about this story is that it highlights how much that technology is part of our lives, whether we want it to be or not. Sympathetic characters, an intriguing plot and the author’s smooth, polished writing style made this one of my favorite suspense stories of 2020.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
This NY Times bestseller is one of the hottest books of the year and a personal favorite. As everyone knows, weddings can be horrifically stressful, frustrating events, and that is certainly true of the nuptials of Jules Keegan and Will Slater. They’ve decided to have the luxurious celebration at a Folly on a small island off the coast of Ireland, with the breathtaking vistas meant to serve as a backdrop to their gorgeous, meticulously planned event. This is an important publicity moment for them. He’s an up-and-coming actor, she’s an internet sensation. Their union is newsworthy, their epic, exclusive wedding will be as well. But they have never had comfortable relationships with those nearest and dearest to them and the trauma of putting all those hostile personalities together means that at some point, bodies are going to start dropping.
The characters here are intriguing, their secrets fascinating, the plot riveting and the venue perfect. If you like your thrillers smart and engaging, give this one a try.
Word of warning: Like a real wedding, this book involves a lot of players. There are ushers, a best man, a maid of honor, the wedding MC, the wedding planner, parents, siblings, cousins, college friends – this is a big event and the list goes on and on. The story is told by multiple people who all have history with each other and we do an occasional deep dive into that history. It takes place over the course of two days, another factor that can cause some confusion. I definitely recommend reading over listening on this one, as the latter will most likely be very frustrating unless you concentrate completely upon what you are hearing – and take notes!
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Noemí Taboada is sent to High Place, a distant house high in the hills in the Mexican countryside, on a rescue mission. Her cousin had married a handsome Englishman in extreme haste and it sounds as though she is being made to regret that decision. Once Naomi arrives she realizes that the family is unlikely to let either woman go without a fight.
This atmospheric, chilling thriller will have you reading late into the night. It is not to be missed.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
The Safe Place by Anna Downes
Emily is a screw-up, perpetually losing jobs, alienating the allies she needs, and making a muck up of her life. When her latest firing leaves her with no way to pay the rent, she jumps at the chance to be a nanny/housekeeper at a remote luxury villa in France. In keeping with her luck, things just get worse from there.
This story is familiar in all the best ways and surprising at all the right moments. Definitely a good reminder that no amount of luxury can make a place safe when it’s full of dangerous people.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
Older Reads:
An Unwanted Guest by Shari LaPena
In the winter wonderland of the Catskills sits Mitchell’s Inn, a luxurious lodge with spacious rooms boasting huge woodburning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, a bar made entirely from ice and snow and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery.
When the weather takes a turn for the worse and they are cut off from contact with the outside world, the guests try to make the best of it and enjoy their opulent shelter. But death stalks the hallways of this posh establishment and soon there is nothing they can do but hope they can survive the storm.
An amazing, riveting mystery with a surprise twist at the end.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
In the Dark by Loreth Anne White
It’s a trap! The promise of a luxury vacation at a secluded wilderness spa has brought together eight lucky guests. But the spa turns out to be nothing like what they expected, they are trapped by the remote location and dangerous weather and worst of all, it quickly becomes apparent they were brought to this location to die.
White does a fantastic job of pitting man against the elements and each other, and creates a dark, mesmerizing mystery.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
An ad for an au pair has Rowan Caine moving to Heatherbrae House a luxurious “smart” home in a remote but beautiful location in the Scottish Highlands. What she doesn’t know is that the parents will strand her there, with children she doesn’t know and a malevolent presence determined to destroy her.
Spooky, chilling, and riveting this is Ware at the top of her game and is a not to be missed gothic thriller.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible, or your local independent bookstore
These are some of my favorite mysteries about folks locked into a dark,and dangerous situation. What are yours?
~ Maggie Boyd
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I enjoyed The Guest List too. What I learned is to never take a boat to a party. :)
LOL Numerous mysteries have assured me that the words remote location actually translate into “death trap”.
Having had a couple people in my family with medical emergencies over the years my immediate thought now is “how far are we/them from a hospital?”.
IRL that’s important to me, too. I want to know what emergency services are available and how quickly I can get to them when I travel.
I’ve tried Ruth Ware’s books, but they are full of busyness about cell phones, who has phone service, who can get a signal, who used whose phone to text, etc.—it got exhausting. I gave up after her third book. I enjoyed THE GUEST LIST, but I felt there was a really big plot hole that remained unaddressed regarding Will’s relationship with Julia’s sister. It probably wouldn’t have changed the ending of the book, but in every other way THE GUEST LIST was so tightly plotted, it seemed odd to me that this particular point wasn’t caught during edits.
It’s interesting that you should mention the phone issue as I recently finished a mystery that was trashed by quite a few readers because the plot included a character who had a dead cell phone and had left their charger at home while they were on a road trip, which everyone said was simply ridiculous for a twenty something. And I can remember a lot of blow back on Mr. Perfect by Linda Howard over characters not having their phone on them and for the hero saying a husband would never give a mechanic his wife’s cell phone number. (My husband gives mine to every repair person out there :-) Different strokes for different folks, I guess. :-)
My husband made a disgusted noise while reading last night and said he was done with the book he was reading because the plot twist depended on an unlikely dead cellphone. I had to laugh. 21 Century mystery/suspense plot problems!
It definitely changes what works in a plot. I can remember 20 years ago cutting phone lines would have been a stress factor in a mystery. Now? Not so much.
The problem in the book my husband was reading was that the person whose cell phone died was a police officer and he was trying to help someone in danger. He left her alone and didn’t have a charger, and he went back to the precinct and did some work. You can get a charger for a cellphone literally anywhere. She was in trouble and couldn’t reach him. Too many unbelievable things happening.
I’ve found that most people will forgive one glitch but when they start piling on people start getting frustrated. I agree with your husband, that does sound a tad too unbelievable.
The 2018 Halloween sequel found a clever way to deal with a character’s cellphone. During a Halloween party, one character’s angry boyfriend drops her cellphone in the punch! So it makes sense that no one can reach her during a crisis.
I think it really does depend on how the author handle things. The punch bowl sounds like a good solution. :-)
I think it depends on the person. I personally have about three of those battery backups of varying sizes in my handbag at all times because I’m that kind of person. But I have known guys that let their cell run out by accident in an emergency or because they didn’t have their charging cord etc.
I think again, the part about some guys not giving a mechanic their wife’s cell number is true and it cuts both ways. I’ve been astonished talking to other people about what they would and would not allow. I remember talking to a bunch of women friends years ago about a guy I worked with who had made it to the point where he and his wife could afford a luxury vehicle like a sporty Mercedes etc. and his wife said he couldn’t have one because “other women would look at him in it”. I was like “can you believe it?” And a couple women both spoke up to say yes it was true and they wouldn’t allow it either for their husbands. I just zipped my lip then but I was thinking “Wow, just wow.” I couldn’t live with someone thinking I had to police everything all the time. But that’s just me.
My husband is forever forgetting to charge his phone. But we’re dinosaurs, so…
Here’s one I only ever hear from men: “Oh I left my cell phone in the car”.
My Dad – who although in his 80s is far from being a technophobe – only switches his mobile on when he wants to phone someone!
I agree, I don’t want to police everything all the time either. If we can’t trust each other, what’s the point? If I remember correctly the big issue readers had with Mr. Perfect was the attitude that no decent husband would trust a mechanic with his wife’s cell number, not that he in particular wouldn’t but that it was just wrong and stupid in general.
The problem I had with the Ware books was less about whether the phone was charged but more about how one character had service and another one didn’t and one character got ahold of another’s phone and started texting someone else. I finally threw up my hands—I’m tired of keeping track of these darn cell phones!
LOL I used to get that way with George R. R. Martin books. He would introduce someone in book one and five books later they mattered and I was supposed to remember everything about them to figure out why. *Shakes head* Nope.
My kids are notorious for forgetting their chargers or letting their phones die and using apps that quickly drain their phones. Even backup batteries lose power over time, so I can buy why someone’s cell would die. I remember vividly how much my kids whined when we lost power for three days and having to charge phones from our car. Now it’s frustrating that most utilities want you to report outages online. I’ve been in circumstances where my cell hadn’t worked to do just that and reaching customer service the old fashioned way has been nigh on impossible.
Mr. Perfect was published in 2000 before cells were ubiquitous and when they had those big, clunky phones. How quickly we forget.
Call me old but I often get frustrated by the automated phone systems and those have been around for at least 30 years. There are times you just want to talk to a real person and the hoops you have to go through to do that these days!!
I think it depends on how the author sets the story up and the age of the characters definitely makes a difference. In the book I read (and enjoyed) that other readers had such problems with the heroine was twenty something and didn’t have a charger in her car. Other than that, the woman was super efficient so people wondered how someone so together in every other way would conveniently have forgotten the one thing which would have changed the plot.
I can think of two books: The Physick Book Of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe and The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield where the author said they explicitly chose a time before cell phones or in Setterfield’s case, didn’t specify exactly what time period the “modern” story was when writing their novel.
I’ve heard it discussed so many times in the mystery or suspense community whether cell phones have “ruined” mystery/thrillers or just made them really, really difficult to write.
I think modern technology in general makes mysteries harder to write :-) These days there are DNA tests, cyber stalking, anybody can get their hands on tracking devices . . the challenges are endless. I watched the new Rebecca on Netflix and thought how different that story would have to be to take place today. Mrs. DeWinter would have known all about Rebecca with one quick google search!
Yes, exactly. There are so many mysteries that would be solved now if people just had one of those “ring” doorbells with the cameras! Nowadays you never know when you are under surveillance whether it’s people’s personal devices or if you just walk past an ATM or a business with a security camera.
Rebecca is one of those stories that I find you have a different perspective on as you get older. Now that I am older and more assertive I cannot imagine putting up with Mrs. Danver’s b.s. for a minute (or Max’s for that matter). When I was younger it was easier to imagine being intimidated by her.
Mrs. DeWinter is very much an ingénue style character who works only because of her youth and sheltered innocence, imo. They try to give her a bit more agency in the Netflix film and Kristin Scott Thomas does a really nice job with her portrayal of Danvers, making her seem almost innocent to those who don’t know better. The movie also has some spectacular scenery which makes the film feel almost other worldly in its glamor and beauty. Not quite as good as the 1940 film but nice for the kind of evening where you’re just in a mood to chill.
I plan on watching it one of these nights. I’m a big fan of Kristen Scott Thomas’ work.
I wasn’t crazy about the casting of Maxim. I think it works much better if he’s clearly older and has a more sophisticated look than the second Mrs. DeWinter.
I think there’s only 3 years difference between Lily James and Armie Hammer.
The actors did a nice job of showing him as much more worldly, polished and sophisticated. Also, they made him look about ten years older, not just three, so that helped. But yes, it would have worked better with someone older.
Because of all the technological/science/surveillance advances in the past 20 years, I think we’re seeing the “classic mystery/whodunit” morph into something different. I’ve noticed quite a few recent mysteries that, while set in the current day, focus on an unsolved crime from the pre-cell-phone era; or the situation is more of a psychological suspense than a classic mystery. I suppose good writers will find ways to incorporate technology (or plausibly explain its absence), while other writers will continue using clumsy plot points to explain why a cell phone never works when a character needs it.
The key ingredient in a good book is always the writing, isn’t it? I do think we are seeing more remote location mysteries right now specifically because author’s need a space where tech isn’t functional and doesn’t mess with their plotting. :-)
I just got a copy of “The Turn of The Key” and I am excited to dig in. I’ve never read Ruth Ware before but she’s been on my radar for a while.
Hopefully there aren’t any plot holes because from the description it’s right up my alley.
Shannon and I both liked it so I hope you do too!