You’re Not Going Anywhere: The Spinetingling Appeal of Closed Circle Mysteries By Sharon Short, Author of Trouble Island

The mystery genre comes with an intrinsic promise of twists, turns, mayhem—a literary roller coaster ride! Anyone can show up at any time. Anything can happen.

But what if all the characters in a mystery or suspense novel are confined to one specific place? Unable to leave to find help or gather information… and no hope of anyone coming with help or resources.

Such are the constraints of “Closed Circle” mysteries, a close cousin to “Locked Room” mysteries, in which the crime takes place in a seemingly impossible-to-access location. While the crime need not occur in an impossible-to-access location in a closed circle mystery, the story’s characters are stuck together on a boat, in a mansion or other building, on an island, or other remote location for some reason—bad weather is often the pretext—without access to anyone outside of the circle.

The characters confined in this circle realize they’re not going anywhere; they’re stuck with an as-yet unidentified killer and under pressure to quickly figure out what’s going on if they have a chance of survival. From the very beginning of such a story, high stakes and tension are ratcheted up.

I love reading this subgenre of mystery so it was only a matter of time before I wrote my own closed circle suspense, Trouble Island, the tagline for which is, “On an island full of secrets, is death the only escape?” On the Lake Erie private island owned by a Prohibition gangster’s estranged wife, an alleged murderess—forced into hiding as the wife’s servant—plots her escape just as the gangster and a rogue ice storm make unexpected landfall.

Because the novel is also set in the 1930s, there are no telephones or cell phones on the remote island, and no helicopters or private planes. And during the ice storm, no boats that can safely come to the island.

Writing a closed circle mystery was challenging—a challenge I relished and I hope readers will too.

Here are a dozen closed circle mysteries—not by any means an exhaustive list:

Agatha Christie: Murder on the Orient Express and And Then There Were None. Any list of closed circle mysteries must include Dame Agatha. In Murder on the Orient Express, a snowdrift stops the famous train in its tracks just after midnight; by morning, a passenger is dead in his locked compartment. A locked room mystery embedded in a closed circle mystery! In And Then There Were None, ten strangers assemble on a private island at the invitation of an eccentric millionaire who is not on the island. Soon, the strangers begin dying one by one.
Ruth Ware: The Woman in Cabin Ten and One by One. Again, any list of closed circle mysteries must include Ruth Ware. In The Woman in Cabin Ten, a travel journalist is on a weeklong trip on small luxury cruise. But soon, a woman is thrown overboard—but only the journalist seems to be aware of the tragedy. In One by One, a team from a tech start up retreats to a ski chalet in the Alps. An avalanche cuts off the chalet, and team members begin dying, one by one.
Carol Goodman: The Disinvited Guest. Years after the 2020 pandemic, another virus surfaces, and a small group of friends gather on a private island. Soon, past haunts and tensions emerge and murder ensues.
Lucy Foley: The Guest List. Guests gather on an island off the Irish coast for a lavish wedding. A storm traps them, and then one of the guests is found dead.
Sarah Pearse: The Sanatorium. An abandoned sanatorium in the Alps has been renovated into a fancy hotel. A couple and their guests arrive for a wedding, but a storm cuts off access to the hotel, the bride goes missing, and death arrives.
Rachel Howzell Hall: They All Fall Down. A woman accepts a surprise invitation to a private island off the coast of Mexico where she meets six strangers who were also invited. Soon, it’s clear false pretenses brought all seven to the island, and one by one, they’re all in danger, or worse.
Taylor Adams: No Exit. A blizzard traps five strangers at a highway rest stop. One of them, a college student, soon realizes a little girl is being held captive in one of the cars.
Yukito Ayatsuji: The Decagon House Murders.  Members of a university detective-fiction club travel to a remote Japanese island—and soon, they’re being murdered one by one.
Alice Feeney: Daisy Darker. Again, the trapped-on-an-island trope provides the setting for a family gathered to celebrate their matriarch’s birthday. Instead, she’s found dead, the first of several victims.
Megan Goldin: The Escape Room.An escape room at the top of a high rise offers a team-building exercise to colleagues from the world of finance. But on their way to the game, the colleagues are trapped in the elevator and it’s soon clear that a deadly game is afoot.