50 free Mystery trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This mystery trivia quiz covers the whodunit in all its forms: the first detective story (Poe's Dupin in 1841), Wilkie Collins and The Moonstone, Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie's Poirot and Marple and The Mousetrap, the Golden Age Detection Club, the hardboiled school of Hammett and Chandler, Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Perry Mason, Nero Wolfe, Maigret and Morse, modern bestsellers like Gone Girl, The Da Vinci Code, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Thursday Murder Club, and screen sleuths from Columbo and Scooby-Doo to Sherlock, Broadchurch and Only Murders in the Building. There is a Cluedo question too. About a third of the questions are easy for anyone who reads crime novels or watches detective television, a third are medium, and the rest will test people who know their locked-room mysteries from their cozies. Good for a book-club night, a library quiz or a murder-mystery party warm-up. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedic source and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which 1841 story by the author of 'The Raven' is considered the first modern detective story?
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Poe called it a 'tale of ratiocination'; the killer turns out to be an orangutan.
Q 02What is the name of Poe's Parisian amateur detective, the ancestor of Sherlock Holmes?
C. Auguste Dupin
He appears in only three stories and, like Holmes later, seems able to read his companion's mind.
Q 03What is Wilkie Collins's 1868 novel about a stolen Indian diamond, an early template for the detective novel?
The Moonstone
It was serialised in Dickens's magazine All the Year Round; Collins is sometimes called the grandfather of English detective fiction.
Q 04In which 1887 novel did Sherlock Holmes first appear?
A Study in Scarlet
Fame came four years later with the Strand Magazine short stories, starting with 'A Scandal in Bohemia'.
Q 05How many Sherlock Holmes short stories did Arthur Conan Doyle write, alongside the four novels?
56
All but one are set between 1880 and 1914, and most are narrated by Dr. John H. Watson.
Q 06The Hound of the Baskervilles is set largely on which English moor?
Dartmoor
It marked Holmes's first appearance after his 'death' in 'The Final Problem', and its success brought him back for good.
Q 07How many detective novels did Agatha Christie write?
66
Plus 14 short-story collections, and her estate has trademarked the nickname 'Queen of Crime'.
Q 08Hercule Poirot, Christie's Belgian detective, credits his success to what?
His little grey cells
He appears in 33 novels, two plays and 51 short stories, from The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920 to Curtain in 1975.
Q 09In which fictional English village does Miss Marple live?
St Mary Mead
She debuted in a 1927 magazine story and her first novel was The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.
Q 10Which Christie novel, set on an island off Devon, is the world's best-selling mystery novel?
And Then There Were None
Ten guests accused of past crimes die one by one according to a rhyme; Christie called it her hardest book to write.
Q 11Under what title was Poirot's snowbound-train novel first published in the US in 1934?
Murder in the Calais Coach
The train is stuck in a snowdrift in what is now Croatia, and Poirot's trip home from the Middle East is interrupted.
Q 12Which Agatha Christie play holds the record for the longest run of any play in the world?
The Mousetrap
It opened in the West End in 1952 and passed its 30,000th performance in March 2025; audiences are asked not to reveal the twist.
Q 13Who was the original Detective Sergeant Trotter when Christie's record-breaking play opened in 1952?
Richard Attenborough
Q 21Dashiell Hammett created Sam Spade and which married sleuthing couple from The Thin Man?
Nick and Nora Charles
His 1929 novel Red Harvest made Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels.
Q 22Nancy Drew books are published under which collective pseudonym?
Carolyn Keene
Edward Stratemeyer created her in 1930 as the female counterpart to the Hardy Boys; the original series ran to 175 novels.
Q 23The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe, debuted in what year?
1927
Ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane wrote many of the early books as 'Franklin W. Dixon'; the first 38 were heavily revised from 1959.
His wife Sheila Sim was the first Mollie Ralston; more than 400 actors had played the eight roles by 2012.
Q 14Who played Poirot in all 70 episodes of ITV's Agatha Christie's Poirot from 1989 to 2013?
David Suchet
By the finale, Curtain, every major Christie work featuring the detective had been adapted.
Q 15Who wrote the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and the initiation oath of the Detection Club?
Dorothy L. Sayers
She introduced Harriet Vane in Strong Poison (1930); Harriet resists Wimsey's proposals until Gaudy Night, six books later.
Q 16Who was the first president of the Detection Club, founded in 1930?
G. K. Chesterton
Chesterton's own sleuth was Father Brown, the priest-detective of 53 short stories.
Q 17Christie, Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh are collectively known as what?
The Queens of Crime
They defined the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, mostly the 1920s and 1930s.
Q 18The priest-detective Father Brown was loosely based on whom?
A real Bradford parish cleric
Monsignor John O'Connor helped bring about Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism in 1922; Mark Williams has played the character on BBC TV since 2013.
Q 19Which pulp magazine first published Hammett's Sam Spade and Chandler's early stories?
Black Mask
The Maltese Falcon was serialised there from September 1929; Chandler's 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot' appeared in 1933.
Q 20Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe first appeared under that name in which 1939 novel?
The Big Sleep
Its title is a euphemism for death; Chandler only turned to crime writing at 44 after losing his oil-company job.
Q 24Boy detective Leroy Brown is better known by what nickname?
Encyclopedia
Donald J. Sobol wrote the first of the 29 books in two weeks in 1963.
Q 25Erle Stanley Gardner's lawyer-detective Perry Mason appears in how many novels?
82
Every one involves a client charged with murder; Raymond Burr played him on CBS from 1957 to 1966.
Q 26Rex Stout's armchair detective Nero Wolfe rarely leaves his New York brownstone. What does he tend there?
Orchids
Archie Goodwin does the legwork and narrates; Wolfe was born in Montenegro and eats gourmet meals cooked by Fritz Brenner.
Q 27Ellery Queen was both a detective and the pseudonym of which two cousins?
Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine has been published continuously since 1941.
Q 28Georges Simenon's Paris police detective Jules Maigret appears in how many novels?
75
Plus 28 short stories between 1930 and 1972, translated into more than 50 languages.
Q 29John Dickson Carr, master of the locked-room mystery, created which two English detectives?
Gideon Fell and Sir Henry Merrivale
An American who lived for years in England, he also wrote as Carter Dickson.
Q 30In a 'locked-room' mystery, what makes the crime seem impossible?
The killer apparently could not have got in or out
The classic case is a corpse in a windowless room locked from the inside, with all the clues laid before the reader.