Mystery Books with a Closed Circle Mystery

by Jo A. Hiestand
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5 books
I love a good mystery. I love it even more if the characters in the story know each other. This leads to emotions, backstories, and motives for anger or hatred that boil over into murder. This, of course, is the backbone of the closed circle mystery—a type of mystery that excludes government agents or foreign entities who might be paid to knock off someone. That’s too impersonal for me. I like the intricacy of people hiding behind masks and veiling their feelings or plans so the reader can discover them, rather like the layers of an onion. This makes detecting more fun. I think each of the books I’ve chosen for the Closed Circle Mystery list fits this definition. They are five of my favorites. I hope you will find some new favorites in this list.
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Death and the Dancing Footman

Ngaio Marsh, 2012
It is World War Two in England. In Ngaio Marsh’s Death and the Dancing Footman a small group of people have been invited to a country house. One of them is found murdered. The remoteness of the house contributes to the limited group of people who could be the possible killer, making it a classic closed-group story. It’s a good mystery. It also offers a thought-provoking contrast to the real world-consuming event raging at the time, for in the book an English woman’s life 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 and to make us consider that not all people—not even someone of the same nationality as the current enemy—are bad. I loved this idea and thought it quite brilliant of Marsh. And something I think is rather unique in mystery novels.

House of Storm

Mignon G. Eberhart, 2012
House of Storm, by Mignon G. Eberhart, features a group of sequestered people who live on a small Caribbean island. A murder occurs, pointing to one of the residents as the killer. To increase the story’s feeling of danger and the urgency to uncover the killer, a storm is headed for them. The house must be secured and shutters put up. Will clues to the murder be destroyed in the rain? Is the killer lurking outside or has he sneaked inside, as the unlocked outer 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 suspect—a 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 story really does offer a closed group of suspects, for the killer is on the island with them, so has to be one of them.

Wildfire at Midnight

Mary Stewart, 1991
Wildfire at Midnight, by Mary Stewart, 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, so everyone knows each other. Everyone also 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. It also underscored the contrast between their forced solitude at the hotel as opposed to Elizabeth and Hillary’s freedom to do what they wished. Another closed group in which the killer can be found.

Green for Danger

Christianna Brand, 2023
Christianna Brand’s Green for Danger is another closed-circle mystery; this time, the circle is 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 were like during the war. I liked the feeling of the remote locale that this closed circle of acquaintances shared, as well as the overall tension and urgency that the war and the blitz added: solve the murders before a third one might happen!

Hounds and Jackals

Barbara Wood, 2012
Hound and Jackals, by Barbara Wood, comes close to the government agency/foreign entity mystery, but not quite. The protagonist, Lydia, travels from Los Angeles to Italy and Egypt to find her sister, Adele, who’s always had a penchant for getting into trouble. This time the trouble seems to stem from a gift from Adele: a jackal, a game piece from the ancient Egyptian board game Hound and Jackals. Valuable beyond belief, as the break-in and subsequent ransacking of Lydia’s home confirms. This is all she needs to convince her that Adele is in trouble and something mysterious is going on. As Lydia follows the route from Italy to Egypt to hunt down Adele’s whereabouts, she continuously encounters the same few people. She also becomes enmeshed with a mysterious Arab named Ahmed Rasheed. There is the overall tension of trying to find Adele and attempting to understand mysterious clues left by her, and unraveling whether Ahmed Rasheed is a good guy or a bad guy. This book is a wonderful mix of mystery and the unveiling of the true personalities of everyone involved, a closed circle of suspects blanketed in the larger world of Egypt and its antiquities.