Locked room mystery

A locked room mystery serves as an important foundational theme for the novel “The Human Flies” by Hans Olav Lahlum. Locked room mysteries, credited with being invented fully by Edgar Allen Poe, involve a mystery or murder committed in a room that is locked, with no seeming way in or out for the individual who committed the crime. The murder of Harald Olesen is such a locked room mystery.

When K2 arrives at 25 Krebs’, he discovers that Olesen has been found dead in Flat 3A, his home. The residents report responding to the sound of a gunshot seconds after it was heard, only to find the door locked, and to have passed no one on the stairs or in the lift on the way up. The windows are also locked, and with no fire escape, stand thirty-some feet above the sidewalk. This, is begs...