The locked room mystery is one of the iconic creations of popular fiction. Michael Cook's critical study reveals how this archetypal form of the puzzle story has had a significant effect in shaping the immensely popular genre of detective fiction. The book includes analysis of texts from Poe to the present day.

Preface Edgar Allan Poe and the Detective Story Narrative The Locked Compartment: Charles Dickens's The Signalman and Enclosure in the Railway Mystery Story The Body in the Library: Reading the Locked Room in Anna Katherine Green's The Filigree Ball G.K. Chesterton's Enclosure of Orthodoxy in The Wrong Shape The Hollow Text: Illusion as Theme in John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man Jorge Luis Borges and the Labyrinth of Detection The Question is the Writer Himself: Paul Auster's Locked Room in the City of Glass The Narrative of Enclosure Index