Mystery about a Singapore Police Inspector obsessed with locked room mysteries, who finally gets his chance to solve one. Not a bad read, but a bit pointless. It would make more sense to just read John Dickson Carr in the first place. His solutions are a lot more clever than this one. ( )

Singapore has few murders so Inspector Zhang takes the time to try to solve this locked door mystery by using his intellect and deductive skills rather than relying on forensics. ( )

Grrr...I'm bummed because I figured this out about half-way through, but the story was enjoyable nevertheless. This IS a short story. It can be read in about 35-45 minutes. Those who love Shelock Holmes stories will happily gobble this one up. ( )

A charming homage to John Dickson Carr, master of the "locked room" mysteries. Zhang is excited because he has been called to the location of a murder in which the scene is straight out of Carr and Zhang recognizes that in Singapore, where few crimes are committed, he may never get another opportunity to emulate the great literary detectives. Sergeant Lee plays Watson to Zhang's assumed role of Holmes.

A man is found dead in his hotel room, stabbed, but with no murder weapon in the room and CCTV showing that no one had entered or left the room during the very small window of time when he had to have been killed. Zhang runs through the classic definitions of locked room possibilities, violating protocol by refusing to permit Lee to call for Forensics, insisting he will solve the crime using only his "little gray cells."

Free short story on Kindle. Leather has written a series of Inspector Zhang stories that are quite entertaining and very inexpensive. ( )

Inspector Zhang loves mysteries, but as a Detective Inspector with the Singapore Police Force he knows that mysteries are few and far between. There are relatively few crimes in the city state and those that are committed are usually solved quickly. But that all changes when Inspector Zhang is called to a top Singapore hotel where a guest has been found murdered in a locked room. The guest made a phone call to room service shortly before he was killed - but CCTV footage shows that nobody entered or left the room. So finally Inspector Zhang has his wish - a mystery to solve. But will it be too much for him?

This is a short story, just under 9000 words, equivalent to about 30 pages. A perfect read if you have an hour to kill.

It has received a four star review from Amazon Top 500 Reviewer Shaun Horrigan. He wrote - "Impeccably dressed and well spoken, Inspector Zhang is a Detective Inspector in the Singapore Police. He loves reading, especially traditional detective fiction, even going as far as teaching himself Japanese in order to read a series of books that were never published in English.

"For his entire career he has longed for a murder mystery to test his deductive powers, but murders hardly ever happen in Singapore. Summoned late one night to a five star hotel, it seems he has finally got his wish when the body of a wealthy American businessman is discovered in what seems to be a 'locked room mystery'.

"I certainly haven't read all of Stephen Leather's works, but I have read a few, and those that I have read have a few things in common. They are all extremely well written in a very contemporary style and they have all been hard hitting and rather graphic. This little story is also well written, but it is the total opposite in terms of style. This story reads very much like an Agatha Christie "whodunnit". It is very gentle in style, has no gore, is not in any way graphic in nature, and has no strong language at all. All in all it is a very easy going read. Personally I found this a refreshing change.

"Stephen Leather has very much taken the Kindle to heart and as I would expect the Kindle presentation is first class. I only picked up one minor typo in the entire story. This little story took me just over half an hour to read and is 465 locations on the Kindle/roughly 30 pages, about the perfect length for something to read between novels.

I have also included the first few chapters of another detective story set in Asia - Bangkok Bob and The Missing Mormon.

Stephen Leather is one of the UK's most successful thriller writers. He was a journalist for more than ten years on newspapers such as The Times, the Daily Mail and the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Before that, he was employed as a biochemist for ICI, shovelled limestone in a quarry, worked as a baker, a petrol pump attendant, a barman, and worked for the Inland Revenue. He began writing full time in 1992, he has sold more than three million copies and his books are published in more than ten languages. ( )