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Government departments or agencies
Hotels
Legal institutions
Court rooms
Law offices
Medical institutions
Hospitals
Nursing colleges
Psychiatric wards
Retirement homes
Museums, Art Galleries
Religious institutions
Cathedral Closes
Churches
Convents
Monasteries
Ships
Theatre/Opera companies
Trains
Villages
The number of kinds of closed societies has probably increased since Auden
wrote his essay, but a closed world still limits the number of available
suspects. Even when there are 70 or more potential suspects, as in
V.C. Clinton-Baddeley’s
My Foe Outstretch’d Beneath a Tree, 1968 (a mystery set in a private
club in London), that is considerably fewer than the potential suspects in
the search for a serial killer in New York City, an unusually open society.
Besides limiting the number of suspects, closed society mysteries lend
themselves to timetables and alibis, beloved of Golden Age writers, and
those of us who like that kind of mystery, full of clues and puzzles for the
reader.
My favorite closed society mysteries are those that take place in schools or
colleges. I’ve outlined below of the types of schools I’ve encountered in
mystery fiction, with examples of books using each as a setting.
1.
English
boys’ boarding schools/prep schools
Barnard, Robert.
School for Murder, 1983.
Bruce, Leo. Death
at St. Asprey’s School, 1967.
George,
Elizabeth.
Well Schooled in Murder, 1990.
Gilbert, Michael.
The Night of the Twelfth, 1976.
Le Carré, John.
A Murder of Quality, 1962
Mitchell, Gladys.
Tom Brown’s Body, 1949.
2.
English
girls’ boarding schools/prep schools
Christie, Agatha.
Cat Among the Pigeons, 1959.
Lemarchand, Elizabeth.
Death of an Old Girl, 1967.
3.
Colleges,
excluding Oxford
or Cambridge
Cross, Amanda.
Death in a Tenured Position, 1981.
Gosling, Paula.
Monkey Puzzle, 1990.
Hill,
Reginald.
An Advancement of Learning, 1971.
Neel, Janet.
Death Among the Dons, 1993.
Tey, Josephine.
Miss Pym Disposes, 1946.
4.
Mysteries
set in Oxford
Crispin, Edmund.
The Moving Toyshop, 1946.
Dibdin, Michael.
Dirty Tricks, 1997.
Fraser, Antonia.
Oxford Blood,
1985
Holt, Hazel. The
Cruellest Month, 1991.
Masterman, J.C.
An Oxford Tragedy, 1933.
Sayers, Dorothy.
Gaudy Night, 1935.
Stallwood, Veronica.
Oxford Fall,
1996.
Strong, Tony.
The Poison Tree, 1997
5.
Mysteries
set in Cambridge
Clinton-Baddeley, V.C.
Death’s Bright Dart, 1967.
Daniel, Glynn.
The Cambridge Murders, 1945.
George,
Elizabeth.
For the Sake of Elena, 1993.
James, P.D. An
Unsuitable Job for a Woman, 1972.
Another type of closed society mystery that appeals to me are those set
in churches, convents, or monasteries, especially the contemporary (or
near contemporary) ecclesiastical mystery. Again, I excluded any that are
not truly “closed,” like Catherine
Aird’s The Religious Body, 1966; and
Antonia Fraser’s Quiet as
a Nun, 1977. Some of my favorites:
Charles, Kate. Appointed to Die, 1993. (Charles’s entire
series is interesting.)
Gilbert, Michael.
Close Quarters, 1947.
Gilbert, Michael.
The Black Seraphim, 1983.
Greenwood, Diane.
Idol Bones, 1993
My favorite closed society novel is one that, by my own definition, isn’t a
true “Golden Age” mystery, although it was written at the right time:
Dorothy Sayer’s
Gaudy Night, 1935. I’m not going to tell you why I don’t think
it’s a perfect mystery, because that might spoil the book for you, but like
To Kill a Mockingbird, and Pride and Prejudice, it’s on my 100
Favorite Books List. It’s not only a great love story, it’s very
suspenseful.
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