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49 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 49 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
The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841, is the 'tale of ratiocination' in which the killer turns out to be an escaped orangutan.
Q 02What is the name of Poe's Parisian amateur detective, the ancestor of Sherlock Holmes?
C. Auguste Dupin
C. Auguste Dupin appears in only three stories, beginning in 1841, 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
The Moonstone, serialised in Dickens's magazine All the Year Round in 1868, follows the theft of a diamond looted from India and Sergeant Cuff's investigation.
Q 04In which 1887 novel did Sherlock Holmes first appear?
A Study in Scarlet
A Study in Scarlet appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887; fame came with the Strand Magazine stories from 1891, starting with 'A Scandal in Bohemia'.
Q 05How many Sherlock Holmes short stories did Arthur Conan Doyle write, alongside the four novels?
56
Conan Doyle wrote 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories, gathered in five collections beginning with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1892; most are narrated by Dr Watson.
Q 06The Hound of the Baskervilles is set largely on which English moor?
Dartmoor
The Hound of the Baskervilles is set on Dartmoor in Devon, around Baskerville Hall and the Grimpen Mire; it was the first Holmes story published after 'The Final Problem'.
Q 07How many detective novels did Agatha Christie write?
66
Agatha Christie wrote 66 detective novels, beginning with The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1920, plus 14 short-story collections.
Q 08Hercule Poirot, Christie's Belgian detective, credits his success to what?
His little grey cells
Poirot's 'little grey cells', his phrase for the brain's powers of order and method, recur through 33 novels and more than 50 stories from 1920 to Curtain in 1975.
Q 09In which fictional English village does Miss Marple live?
St Mary Mead
Miss Marple lives in St Mary Mead, the village whose gossip and small crimes she reads as parallels to murder; 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
And Then There Were None has sold about 100 million copies; ten guests lured to an island off Devon die one by one in the pattern of a nursery rhyme.
Q 11Under what title was Poirot's snowbound-train novel first published in the US in 1934?
Murder in the Calais Coach
Murder in the Calais Coach was the 1934 US title of Murder on the Orient Express; the train is stuck in a snowdrift in what is now Croatia.
Q 12Which Agatha Christie play holds the record for the longest run of any play in the world?
The Mousetrap
The Mousetrap opened in the West End in November 1952 and passed its 25,000th performance in 2012; 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
Nick and Nora Charles, a retired detective and his wealthy wife, solve the case in The Thin Man (1934), Hammett's last novel.
Q 22Nancy Drew books are published under which collective pseudonym?
Carolyn Keene
Carolyn Keene is the Stratemeyer Syndicate house name; Mildred Wirt Benson ghostwrote most early titles after Nancy Drew's 1930 debut, and the original series ran to 175 novels.
Q 23The Hardy Boys, Frank and Joe, debuted in what year?
1927
The Hardy Boys debuted in 1927 with The Tower Treasure; ghostwriter Leslie McFarlane wrote many early books as 'Franklin W. Dixon', and the first 38 were heavily revised from 1959.
Richard Attenborough was the first Sergeant Trotter, opposite his wife Sheila Sim as 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
David Suchet played Poirot in every episode from 1989 to 2013; by the finale, Curtain, all 33 Poirot novels had been adapted.
Q 15Who wrote the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and the initiation oath of the Detection Club?
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers created Lord Peter Wimsey in Whose Body? (1923) and introduced Harriet Vane in Strong Poison (1930); Harriet refuses Wimsey's proposals until Gaudy Night (1935).
Q 16Who was the first president of the Detection Club, founded in 1930?
G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton, creator of Father Brown, served as the Detection Club's first president from its founding in 1930 until his death in 1936.
Q 17Christie, Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh are collectively known as what?
The Queens of Crime
The Queens of Crime is the label for the quartet of British women who dominated the Golden Age of detective fiction in the 1920s and 1930s, each creating a series sleuth.
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
Black Mask serialised The Maltese Falcon from September 1929 and printed Chandler's first story, 'Blackmailers Don't Shoot', in December 1933.
Q 20Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe first appeared under that name in which 1939 novel?
The Big Sleep
The Big Sleep, whose title is a euphemism for death, introduced Marlowe in 1939; Chandler turned to crime writing at 44 after losing his oil-company job.
Q 24Boy detective Leroy Brown is better known by what nickname?
Encyclopedia
Leroy 'Encyclopedia' Brown earned the nickname for his head full of facts; Donald J. Sobol's series began in 1963 and ran to 29 books.
Q 25Erle Stanley Gardner's lawyer-detective Perry Mason appears in how many novels?
82
Gardner published 82 Perry Mason novels between 1933 and 1973; Raymond Burr played the lawyer on CBS from 1957 to 1966.
Q 26What does Rex Stout's armchair detective Nero Wolfe tend in his New York brownstone?
Orchids
Nero Wolfe tends some 10,000 orchids in his rooftop greenhouse, keeping fixed hours there twice a day; Archie Goodwin does the legwork and narrates.
Q 27Ellery Queen was both a detective and the pseudonym of which two cousins?
Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee
Ellery Queen was the joint pseudonym of cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, who began with The Roman Hat Mystery in 1929 and founded Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in 1941.
Q 28Georges Simenon's Paris police detective Jules Maigret appears in how many novels?
75
Simenon wrote 75 Maigret novels, from Pietr the Latvian (1931) to Maigret and Monsieur Charles (1972), plus 28 short stories.
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 30What is the name of Sherlock Holmes's landlady at 221B Baker Street?
Mrs Hudson
Mrs Hudson is the long-suffering landlady of 221B Baker Street, enduring Holmes's indoor pistol practice and chemical experiments while bringing up breakfasts and clients.