The best mystery books with a closed circle mystery

It is World War Two in England. In Ngaio Marsh’s Death and the Dancing Footman a small group of people has been invited to a country house. One of them is killed. The remoteness of the house contributes to the limited group of people as possible killers, making it a classic closed-group story. It’s a good mystery. It also offers a thought-provoking contrast to the real-world event raging at the time, for in the book an English woman is saved by the German doctor. Marsh is not pro-Axis. She’s merely showing our universal dependency on each other to get through a terrifying situation. I loved this idea and thought it quite brilliant of Marsh. And something I think is rather unique in mystery novels.

House of Storm features a group of sequestered people who live on a Caribbean island. A murder occurs, pointing to one of the residents as the killer. To increase the story’s feeling of danger and urgency, a storm is headed for them. The house must be secured, shutters put up. Will clues be destroyed in the rain? Is the killer lurking outside or has he sneaked inside, as the unlocked door suggests? I liked the tension created by the heroine’s approaching marriage to a man she doesn’t love, the murder investigation centering around the man she does love, and the storm. I also liked the contrast with Society’s current label of “Paradise”—a leisurely life on a sunny, tropical island.

This book concerns vacationers at a small hotel in the Scottish Hebrides. A murder is committed. Due to the island and the hotel’s remoteness, the location creates a closed community. Everyone has reasons to be annoyed with others, adding tension and motives for murder. I particularly like the enveloping mood of the wild mountains and fog. Radio broadcasts of real-life events (Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation preparations and Sir Edmund Hillary’s climb of Mount Everest) add a strange link to the outside world for this group of isolated hotel guests. I felt it also underscored the contrast between their forced solitude and stay at the hotel as opposed to Elizabeth and Hillary’s freedom to do what they wished.

Brand’s Green for Danger is another closed group mystery, this time the suspects are the medical staff at a small, rural military hospital. Medical and hospital staff live there, so outsiders are very few.  It’s World War Two in England, during the blitz. Bombs are dropping, lights are going off and on, and it’s during an operation that a person is murdered. Later in the story, a nurse is killed. I liked being plunged into the hospital community, getting to know them, and seeing what their lives are like during the war. I liked the feeling of remoteness to this closed group, as well as the overall tension and urgency that the war and the blitz add: solve the murders before a third one might happen!

Gaudy Night centers around a college reunion at Oxford University, the women knowing each other and having a shared history. There is no murder, but the harassment and murderous threats are nearly as scary. Who is behind these terrifying events? Although people may come and go, thereby not technically a secluded group, they stay together due to the reunion. No outsiders are considered a suspect; therefore, the focus is narrowed to one in this group as the perpetrator. I liked this book despite there being no murder. The intensifying fright I felt as each strange event occurs makes it mysterious enough.