Top 5 Taped Room Mysteries

While you’ll often hear hardcore, borderline obsessive mystery fans talking about locked room mysteries, there’s one type of such a room that I feel triumphs over the others—the taped room. While typical locked rooms have all their exists locked or blocked off in some way, taped rooms go a step further, ensuring that nothing—not even air—can possibly enter or exit the room where the victim died.

I’ve always enjoyed these types of puzzles, partially because of the aesthetics of it. Having every seam covered in sticky adhesive is almost comical, yet it proves a formidable opponent for every detective. However, the solutions to such a problem are limited, and I know of only a few stories that have attempted to propose one. So, why not rank them in turn?

In general, I prefer taped room tricks that are dependent on the room being taped. If the solution can simply apply to an ordinary locked room, then the extra effort it takes to cover every gap seems unnecessary. Nearly every story in this list uses a completely different solution, with almost no common points, but how many of them are truly brilliant?

[Since writing this post, a few more examples have been brought to my attention by TomCat, namely several Detective Conan episodes and a short story seemingly buried in an old Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I haven’t had time to track these down, but if I get around to it, perhaps I’ll do a revised version or addendum to this list. I have read “Miracle on Christmas Eve” by Lin Szu-Yen, which I forgot about since it would work just as well without the taped room aspect (the room in question is locked and guarded as well). Still a solid story but I feel justified in leaving it off this list to keep it at an even 5.]

Before we start, I want to give an honorable mention to DWaM’s A Eulogy for Reason, which features a woman being lit on fire in a room taped from the inside. This is a brilliant book, effectively utilizing changes in viewpoints to tell a fractured, terrifying narrative, but the taped room solution is probably the lamest part. Sorry DWaM, you’ll DWaM em next time.

5. The Author is Dead by A. Carver

In creating their classically plotted novel, mysterious mystery author A. Carver set out to include four taped rooms in the same book, likely out of a similar fascination as mine. As a result, tape appears prominently in the novel, covering doors, windows, keyholes, and even an Iron Maiden, and Carver promises to use entirely original solutions not touched upon by previous authors!

They mostly succeed, and I certainly respect the enthusiasm. However, Carver’s solutions are very physical and hard to visualize, and for the most part they’d work just as well with a deadbolted door. I think the last one uses the tape element in the most creative way, but I also barely remember the trick now. Overall, I have to put these tricks at the bottom, as all my favorite elements of this book are unrelated to the locked room tricks. I’m also keeping my description short, as you can read about my thoughts on this book in the earlier blog post.

A quick note: the trick to the second entry on this list is mentioned off-hand. It’s not an explicit spoiler, but it might put the answer in your mind before reading that story, so I’d at least track that one down first.

4. He Wouldn’t Kill Patience by John Dickson Carr

Two of the most famous taped rooms occurred because of a challenge between Carr and another author which proposed the taped room problem likely for the first time. Carr’s solution appears in his novel He Wouldn’t Kill Patience, which centers on a reptile house during the blitz. The zoo’s kindly owner dies in a room taped up and filled with coal gas, which seems like a clear suicide—except his newly acquired snake recently dubbed Patience died as well, which his daughter claims he would never do.

It might seem like sacrilege to put the locked room master himself so low on the list (especially as this book was ranked the 13th greatest locked room mystery in 1981), but honestly when I finally tracked down this book on eBay and read to the end, my first thought was “that’s it?” I won’t deny that some parts of the trick are clever, like a particular clue brilliantly hidden in plain sight, but setting aside that element you’re left with very little.

I suspect if the rest of the book were more complex I might place this higher, but other than a clever motive and a great killer who’s taken down brilliantly in a satisfying climax, I was left thoroughly whelmed. Perhaps leaving this one for last was the problem—a natural result of it not being reprinted. It’s worth noting that most of the other works on this list built off this particular novel, so it makes sense they would come up with more clever variations. At the time, Carr’s solution was clever for its simplicity and certainly influential. I can see why some people declare him the victor of his challenge.

3. “The Locked Room” by Kiichi Yusuke

While originally published as a short story, I saw “The Locked Room” in Kagi no Kakatta Heya, a show based on Kiichi’s Enomoto Kei series. The show, and the collection the original story appears in, are named after this story, and for good reason. It’s one of the clear standouts from the series.

The episode starts with Enomoto, a security consultant, getting hired by two lawyers he worked with on a prior case to investigate a death witnessed by his friend Aiichirou. A high schooler seemingly commits suicide by taping every gap in his room and starting a barbecue fire. We watch Aichirou enter the room using his skills as a former thief, confirming that the door was both locked and taped. If the crime was murder, how did the killer pull it off?

This one perhaps has the best presentation, with the room covered in streamers and a brief “suicide note” left on a whiteboard, especially due to the show featuring a miniature constructed by Enomoto which he explores with a small camera. The solution is a delightful puzzlebox and probably my favorite of the show. Each step of the explanation reveals a new problem, with another ingenious solution. Interestingly, the taped room and locked room are completely separate but interrelated elements.

Some scientific knowledge is involved, but the episode does a good job of forecasting it early while still making it hard to tell where it fits in. The story is probably meant to be an inverted mystery, but I kind of got in my head a bit and suspected a completely innocent bystander for no reason. In the end, the killer puts on an unsettling performance, and it’s a delight to see their scheme unraveled.

Perhaps the complexity is the only thing keeping this from being higher. There’s a lot of precise details I expect I’ve forgotten, but that just makes me want to watch the episode again.

Another quick note: I remember reading that this spoils Carr’s solution, but I don’t noticing that line. Might be worth leaving this one for last. Also, another episode of Kagi no Kakatta Heya features a room with all openings sealed (some with tape) to prevent the escape of deadly spiders, but I decided not to include that one since it’s made obvious early on that no one entered the room.

2. “From Another World” by Clayton Rawson

Rawson was the opponent of John Dickson Carr’s challenge, but rather than writing a novel, he included his solution in a short story which is available as part of the short story collection The Great Merlini. Like many of Rawson’s Merlini locked rooms, the story occurs in an office, this time that of a researcher attempting to prove a medium’s ability to conjure objects from nothing. He tapes over the door and windows to ensure no one may enter, but when Merlini arrives at the millionaire’s home, he finds him shot with only the medium in the room—and no weapon.

I actually solved this one, but mostly because I had already heard the real-life story Rawson got his inspiration from, which is worked cleverly into the narrative. The trick remains excellent even today due to its simplicity, and truly feels like something a magician would perform. I don’t recall guessing the killer’s identity, which is well hidden but certainly possible to guess.

I’ve seen some people claim that Rawson’s solution shouldn’t actually apply to the original wager, but I feel it’s perfectly acceptable in the spirit of the challenge. And setting that challenge aside, this is such a fun story, both to read and to try to solve. You can feel Rawson’s joy at concocting this solution on the page, and it’s certainly one of the greatest illusions ever told.

1. “She Wouldn’t Kill Patience” by Ooyama Seiichiro

This story’s a bit of a deep cut, having never received an official translation. It’s Ooyama’s first published story (in Japanese), debuting directly online and later appearing in a yearly Honkaku collection and being named the #8 Honkaku short story from the 2000s. None of Ooyama’s stories have been officially translated, though some were adapted into the alibi-cracking show Alibi Kuzushi Uketawarimasu which can be watched with subtitles. This story was translated by a fan who introduced it as the best taped room story, and I was prepared to disagree, until I found out they were right.

Amusingly, the story is essentially John Dickson Carr fanfiction, which probably explains the lack of an official publication. Dr. Gideon Fell is called to check on an old woman whose fallen into the clutches of a man whose wives have a tendency to die in mysterious circumstances. Upon arriving, he finds her bedroom taped on the inside, the scene set for suicide by coal gas, but her son-in-law argues that the woman would never allow her beloved parrot named Patience to die in his cage.

Sound familiar? Where it would be to Carr’s other sleuth, Henry Merrivale, but I guess Fell missed that one.

This is an excellent story, with a misdirection as blatant as Rawson’s allowing for a remarkable feat from the killer. I’ll admit for a moment I felt cheated by the solution, but then I realized I was only annoyed at how blindly I walked into Ooyama’s trap. This story builds on the situation originally created by Carr to create a trick even bolder than its predecessor, one based as much on psychology as on the four walls of the crime scene.

There’s also a surprising twist to the killer’s identity, with several brazenly brandished clues and a clever alibi trick. For a short story, this has about everything you’d want in a fair play mystery, and it makes me want to read more of Ooyama’s work. Is this fanfiction? Sure, but it’s excellent fanfiction from a man with ingenuity to rival the greats.

Overall, I enjoyed every work appearing on this list. I think in order to attempt a taped room, you have to really know what you’re doing, which is perhaps why I seeked them out for a time. So how did I do? Is my ranking a complete disgrace? Are there any taped rooms hiding out there that I didn’t mention? Be sure to let me know!