Locked-room Mysteries? Escape Rooms? And then … a Locked-in Sleuth?

Hi All. Barb here. Today we’re celebrating the release of FOTW (Friend of the Wickeds) Lea Wait’s new book in her Mainely Needlepoint Mystery series, Thread Herrings. (Love the title).

But first, a word from our sponsors: As  we do every November, the Wicked Authors are holding a giveaway everyday this month to say thank you to our readers. Lea is kicking off the month by giving away a copy of her new release, Thread Herrings, to one lucky commenter on the blog. You can comment until the end of the day tomorrow (November 2nd). The winner will be announced on Saturday, November 3. This one is US only. We will have some giveaways that include our friends farther afield throughout the month.

Okay, that’s done. Take it away, Lea!

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841, is the story most people think of first when they think of a locked-room mystery: a sub-genre of crime fiction in which a victim is killed in a place (e.g. a locked room) seemingly impossible for a murderer to either enter or leave. The sleuth (and the reader) are challenged to use their knowledge and reasoning to solve the puzzle, rather than relying on forensics or interviewing suspects. Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous sleuths to solve seemingly impossible crimes, but many well-known twentieth-century authors have used the same technique … some more successfully than others.

The challenge is so intriguing that today in many towns and cities amateur sleuths can test their own powers of deduction and teamwork by renting sixty minutes in an “Escape Room” – a locked room in which the team must solve a series of puzzles within sixty minutes in order to escape.

But – what about a sleuth who must solve the mystery from a locked room? Intrigued by that possibility, in Thread Herrings, my protagonist, Angie Curtis, is threatened by an unknown killer after she buys a faded piece of eighteenth-century needlework at an auction … and finds a mysterious paper hidden behind the fabric. At first the threats make no sense.

But after a friend is murdered and Angie’s car blows up, the police in Haven Harbor, Maine, insist that Angie stay hidden in protective custody. She does have a cellphone, a handsome companion, and she can call friends for help. But can she piece together bits of information from a wide variety of sources, historical and contemporary, and identify the killer before he (or she) finds her?

Barb again. I LOVE this idea and can’t wait to read Thread Herrings.

Readers: Are you intrigued by locked-room mysteries or Escape Rooms? What resources could a sleuth like Angie call upon? Give us your ideas below or simply say hi to be entered in the giveaway.

USA Today best-selling author Lea Wait lives on the coast of Maine where she writes the Mainely Needlepoint series, the Shadows Antique Print mystery series, and (under the name Cornelia Kidd) the Maine Murder series. She also writes historical novels set in Maine. https://www.leawait.com

— THREAD HERRINGS is the 7^th in the Mainely Needlepoint series, set in the small working waterfront town of Haven Harbor, Maine.