The closed circle of suspects is a common element of

detective fiction Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—whether professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as s ...

, and the

subgenre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a Category of being, category of literature, ...

that employs it can be referred to as the closed circle mystery. Less precisely, this subgenre – works with the closed circle

literary device A narrative technique (known for literary fictional narratives as a literary technique, literary device, or fictional device) is any of several specific methods the creator of a narrative uses to convey what they want —in other words, a stra ...

– is simply known as the "classic", "traditional" or "cozy" detective fiction. It refers to a situation in which for a given

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...

(usually a

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

), there is a quickly established, limited number of

suspect In law enforcement jargon, a suspect is a known person accused or suspected of committing a crime. Police and reporters in the United States often use the word suspect as a jargon when referring to the perpetrator of the offense (perp in dated U ...

s, each with credible

means, motive, and opportunity Criminal investigation is an applied science that involves the study of facts that are then used to inform criminal trials. A complete criminal investigation can include searching, interviews, interrogations, evidence collection and preservation ...

. In other words, it is known that the criminal is one of the people present at or nearby the scene, and the crime could not have been committed by some outsider. The detective has to solve the crime, figuring out the criminal from this pool of suspects, rather than searching for an entirely unknown perpetrator.

History

This type of narrative originated with the British detective fiction.

Agatha Christie Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English writer known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around fictiona ...

's ''

The Mysterious Affair at Styles ''The Mysterious Affair at Styles'' is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie. It was written in the middle of the First World War, in 1916, and first published by John Lane in the United States in October 1920 and in the United ...

'' (1920) has been credited as a work that started this trend. Other writers of that period, dating to the first half of the 20th century, a time known as the

Golden Age of Detective Fiction The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s. The Golden Age proper is, in practice, usually taken to refer to a type of fiction which was pre ...

(or more general,

mystery fiction Mystery is a genre fiction, fiction genre where the nature of an event, usually a murder or other crime, remains wiktionary:mysterious, mysterious until the end of the story. Often within a closed circle of suspects, each suspect is usually prov ...

), reliant on the closed circle and related literary devices include

Dorothy L. Sayers Dorothy Leigh Sayers (; 13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) was an English crime writer and poet. She was also a student of classical and modern languages. She is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between th ...

, G. K. Chesterton,

Margery Allingham Margery Louise Allingham (20 May 1904 – 30 June 1966) was an English novelist from the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", and considered one of its four " Queens of Crime", alongside Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Ngaio Marsh. Alli ...

Ngaio Marsh Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh (; 23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982) was a New Zealand mystery writer and theatre director. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Det ...

and Americans

S. S. Van Dine S. S. Van Dine (also styled S.S. Van Dine) is the pseudonym used by American art critic Willard Huntington Wright (October 15, 1888 – April 11, 1939) when he wrote detective novels. Wright was active in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-Worl ...

and

Ellery Queen Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve ...

. Those early closed circle mysteries preferred a common setting: a British

country house An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a town house. This allowed them to spend time in the country and in the city—hence, for these peopl ...

. The country house was such a common element that it gave another name to what is essentially the same genre and the literary device, the "country house mystery". The persons involved were also commonly part of the

upper class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is gen ...

, generally the

landed gentry The landed gentry, or the ''gentry'', is a largely historical British social class of landowners who could live entirely from rental income, or at least had a country estate. While distinct from, and socially below, the British peerage, th ...

. Other settings than the country house are also possible, and many have been used in the closed circle mysteries even by Christie herself: a ship, a train, an island, and so on. Nonetheless, the requirements for this mystery enforce certain limitations on this genre, and make certain settings, particularly those that explain limited access outsiders would have, and characters with an upper class background – much more common than the others. The numbers of suspects vary, from a group as small as four or five, to all the passengers of a train, coach or wagon. After

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

the closed circle mystery became less common, as other types of

crime novel Crime fiction, detective story, murder mystery, mystery novel, and police novel are terms used to describe narratives that centre on criminal acts and especially on the investigation, either by an amateur or a professional detective, of a crime, ...

s rose to prominence. Nonetheless other writers have continued to use this device till modern days, for example

Rex Stout Rex Todhunter Stout (; December 1, 1886 – October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. His best-known characters are the detective Nero Wolfe and his assistant Archie Goodwin, who were featured in 33 novels and ...

Lucille Kallen Lucille Kallen (May 28, 1922, Los Angeles, California – January 18, 1999, Ardsley, New York) was an American writer, screenwriter, playwright, composer, and lyricist. She was best known for being the only woman in the most famous TV writers' ...

Cyril Hare Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark (4 September 1900 – 25 August 1958) was an English judgeHis Honour A. A. Gordon Clark (Obituaries) The Times Tuesday, 26 August 1958; pg. 10; Issue 54239; col E and crime writer under the pseudonym Cyril Hare. ...

, Jonathan Gash,

Simon Brett Simon Anthony Lee Brett OBE FRSL (born 28 October 1945 in Worcester Park, Surrey, England) is a British author of detective fiction, a playwright, and a producer-writer for television and radio. As an author, he is best known for his mystery s ...

. While the closed circle is a common device in literary fiction, it is a much less common occurrence in real world investigations.

Country house mystery

Examples of the "Country house mystery" from the

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during ...

are: *

And Then There Were None ''And Then There Were None'' is a mystery novel by the English writer Agatha Christie, described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939, as ...

(on an island) * Death and the Dancing Footman by

(isolated by a snowstorm)

Other "Closed Circle... mysteries"

Murder on the Orient Express ''Murder on the Orient Express'' is a work of detective fiction by English writer Agatha Christie featuring the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 1 January 1934. In the U ...

(a stalled train in a snowdrift) *

Death on the Nile ''Death on the Nile'' is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie, published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 1 November 1937 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at s ...

(on a Nile river steamer)

References

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History

Country house mystery

Other "Closed Circle... mysteries"

See also

References