4. Hollow Man (1935) – John Dixon Carr
Especially when it comes to locked room mysteries, there are few better than The Hollow Man. The novel is specifically mentioned in “Wake Up Dead Man” by detective Benoît Blanc, played by Daniel Craig, and “Knives Hour” author Rian Johnson. admired it as an “incredibly complex locked room puzzle”. It stars Carr’s usual detective role, Gideon Fell, who is left to solve the murder of Professor Charles Grimaud and is found shot to death in his study shortly after receiving a mysterious visitor, who disappears without a trace. This tricky novel won praise from crime fans and general readers alike, especially for Fell’s late character lecture on the nature of locked room mysteries and their solutions. So influential was the chapter itself that it was republished many times as a standalone essay, even though it was provided by a fictional detective.
5. Green for Danger (1946) – Sidney Gilliat
Adapting the novel by little-known Golden Age crime writer Christiana Brand, British director Sidney Gilliat, who co-wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1938 thriller The Lady Is Vanishing, was the perfect choice to enhance this already complex crime syndicate. But Green for Danger shows that Gilliat’s directorial skills are equally suited to murder mysteries. Brand’s story follows Inspector Cockrill (played by the perfectly bad Alastair Sim) as he tries to get to the bottom of a double murder. One expertly commands a medical theater during a surgery, another sees off the first witness during a power outage during World War II. Cockrill must untangle the web of liaisons and tensions between the hospital’s small staff of suspects while navigating the natural chaos of wartime Britain.
Alamy6. The Living and the Dead (1954) – Boileau-Narcejac
French crime screenwriting duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac dominated the market in the 1950s with a variety of complex crime thrillers, including their masterpiece, She Is No More (adapted as a classic film by director Henri-Georges Clouzot). Their other novel, 1954’s The Living and the Dead, is best known for the film it influenced, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), but it similarly displays skill at depicting emotional trauma and delivering unrelenting brutality. Roger, a Parisian lawyer, is asked by his friend Gevigne to investigate his wife’s strange behavior, and inevitably falls in love with her. What follows is a haunting mixture of supernatural innuendo and relentless criminal plotting, as a simple investigation inevitably covers up a much more complex murder.
7. Bird with Crystal Feathers (1970) – Dario Argento
Giallo, an Italian film genre, is a must-see for fans of gore-filled murder mysteries. Giallo films, which took their name from the hideous yellow covers of murder thriller paperbacks, looked to translated ghost stories for inspiration and added a healthy injection of gory horror. No one was more successful in this endeavor than the best. Dario ArgentoHis debut novel, The Bird with Crystal Plumes (1970), showcases his visual talent and psychological insight. When American writer Sam (Tony Musante) witnesses the attempted murder of Monica (Eva Renzi) in a Rome museum late at night, he is immediately drawn into a tense story haunted by a killer wearing a black hat and leather gloves. As with many of Argento’s giallo films, the dramatic development is matched by pure, daring violence that achieves a certain operatic quality, right up to the reveal of the murderer at the end.
Alamy8. The Black Tower (1975) – James PD
British author PD James (along with another genius, Ruth Rendell) has inherited Agatha Christie’s mantle as queen of the traditional detective-murder-mystery novel. Her follow-up to DI Adam Dalgliesh is truly her crowning achievement, and The Black Tower (1975) is a great example of the series’ very special nature. More morbid than her other Dalgliesh novels, The Black Tower follows the protagonist, who is off-duty and recovering from leukemia, but whose convalescence is interrupted by a series of suspicious deaths at a rural nursing home. Initially considered by critics to be a little too slow-paced – the Newgate Calendar new york times It was suggested that the book would be “heavy” and “test the patience of most readers” – in hindsight, The Black Tower perfectly highlights James’s unique approach as a crime novelist, favoring meticulous detail, accurate characterization and melancholy over pyrotechnics and flashy shocks.
9. Sleuth (1972) – Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972), an adaptation of Anthony Schaefer’s own play, is perhaps the most self-aware work on this list, as its characters are fluent in murder-mystery tropes and tropes. A conflict between crime novelist Andrew (Laurence Olivier) and his wife’s lover Milo (Michael Caine) develops into a messy power play in which the two fake crimes to manipulate each other. The film received even more critical acclaim than the stage version, receiving four Oscar nominations, including one each for Olivier and Caine. Building on the strong performances of these heavyweights, Sleuth certainly showed that Schafer is firing on all cylinders. Its witty sleight of hand and unforgiving ending are completely unforgettable.
Alamy10. Have Mercy on Us All (2001) – Fred Vargas
One of France’s greatest living crime writers, Vargas (real name Frédéric Audouin-Rouseau) continues the Gallic tendency to weave murder mysteries with Gothic writing, honed by Georges Simenon and Boileau-Narcejac. Indeed, her series of novels about the chaotic Adamsberg Commissioners often portray Paris as a city closer to the macabre tradition of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera than to modern crime novels. The somewhat anachronistic film revolves around a street courier in the 14th arrondissement of Paris who is paid by a mysterious figure to recite a cryptic and ominous message about a plague that will soon return to the city. When a plague symbol appears on the door of a local resident, and subsequent deaths appear to be caused by blackened bodies from the bites of plague-infected fleas, Adamsberg embarks on a particularly dark investigation in this dark but thoroughly gripping page-turner.
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Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
