8 Modern Twists on Locked Room Mysteries

Travel writer Lo Blacklock has been given the perfect assignment. She is to spend one week on the North Sea aboard a luxury cruise with just a few other elite guests.

Lo’s week starts out great, full of relaxation, delicious food, and gorgeous, calm waters. 

Then everything takes a turn. As new cold winds roll over the ship, Lo is awakened in the night by the sound of screams and runs to the window just in time to see a woman’s body thrown overboard from the cabin next door. 

The only problem is that no one was ever checked into that cabin, and no guests are missing from the boat.

Could Lo have possibly imagined the terrible nightmare scene? Or is she stuck on a boat with a murderer, unable to convince anyone of what she saw?

USA Today-bestselling author Audrey J. Cole presents readers with an impossible crime. 

On the long flight from Anchorage to New York, Makayla Rossi simply had to use the bathroom. She left her baby son sleeping and asked a nearby passenger to watch him while she ran to the back of the plane. 

When she returns, she finds the unthinkable has happened: the baby is gone. An inflight search for the child ensues, but he is nowhere to be found. 

When people start agreeing that none of them saw Makayla with a baby, her mental state is drawn into question and the odds against her mount.

This locked room mystery has two levels of locks. 

First, a blizzard leaves college student Darby Thorne stuck at a rest stop on the side of the highway with four complete strangers. 

Then, when Darby steps outside to walk around the parking lot, she finds a kidnapped girl, locked in a cage in a parked van. 

Darby must figure out which of the unfamiliar strangers at the rest stop could be a vicious kidnapper, in order to save the girl, and herself, with no help for miles and no cell service to reach anyone beyond the highway. 

Five contestants make their way to a secluded estate in California to take part in a new game show, One Lucky Winner, excited by the show’s prize of 10 million dollars.

None of them know what to expect or why they were chosen to compete, but the whole game will be live streamed to millions of people around the world.

As they begin to compete in challenges against one another, it is clear something is off about the show. The stakes begin to escalate, and the participants soon realize that whoever is running the show knows some secrets from their pasts.

As the world watches, the five contestants fight to escape from the locked estate with their reputations, and their lives.

Imagine a locked room…and then imagine if it was even more claustrophobic and panic inducing. 

Will Dean’s The Chamber is set on a hyperbaric chamber, a ship resembling a mini submarine, that is lowered to the bottom of the North Sea. Six divers are aboard the ship and set to spend one month diving and working on the seafloor. 

The divers breathe a mixture of oxygen and helium to adjust to the underwater pressure levels. 

When one diver is found dead in their bed, the chamber is overrun with panic and paranoia. The chamber must undergo four days of decompression before the divers can safely exit.

For four long days, the divers are trapped in this tiny space, possibly with a murderer, with absolutely no way of escape.

Charlotte is on the run from her past. Out of desperation, she applies for a job working at a new island resort, carrying her most valuable item with her: her toddler daughter, Alice. 

As Charlotte begins helping with preparations for the resort’s grand opening, Alice must stay completely silent in their locked room at the hotel to avoid being detected. 

But a tropical storm has turned into a hurricane and is quickly approaching the island. Not to mention, a body of a murdered maid is found and Charlotte knows the slaying is a sign to her that someone knows her secrets.

Rushing back to her room in the chaos of the storm and the murder, Charlotte finds that Alice is gone. Now Charlotte is stuck on a remote island with a killer and must locate her missing child before it’s too late—for her or for Alice. 

In this island mystery, we know there’s been a murder, but we must figure out not just the identity of the killer, but the identity of the victim.

From the start, readers know that someone has been killed at the elaborate wedding weekend of the beautiful couple, Jules and Will. But who?

Guests have gathered at an historic island off the coast of Ireland with a dark past. Past tensions and secrets rise to the surface between Jules, her sister and maid of honor, Will, his groomsmen, and the staff planning and executing the wedding. 

As tensions continue to deepen, one character’s past and present experiences will move them to kill another person on the island, against a background of indulgence and a brewing storm. 

High school students and sisters, Ruby and Wren, are just trying to make a little extra money working their summer job at the local Renaissance Fest. 

Then a strange old woman approaches them with an unusual offer: if they agree to attend a dinner with her, posing as her granddaughters, she will pay them each 2,000 dollars for the night.

The sisters jump at the opportunity to earn so much so easily. 

Ruby and Wren soon find themselves in a situation that’s more than they bargained for, surrounded by 13 powerful witches at the dinner party. When a murder occurs, all of the guests, including the decidedly un-magical sisters, are locked in the house by magic that will only lift once the mystery of the killing has been solved.