Mystery short stories to read online
A mystery story begins with something that does not fit — a death, missing silver, a document with one line too many — and ends when someone explains it. In between lies what makes the genre: suspicion, clues, and the pleasure of trying to reach the solution first.
The stories on this page are short, complete mysteries. Each one takes between half an hour and a little over an hour to read, is split into short chapters and is solved within itself.
Published mystery stories
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Houses Die of Heat
In December, in Norilsk, the sun does not rise. Block Seventeen has split open from top to bottom, and its tenants know that if the crack is the climate's doing, the block will be declared unsafe and they will finally go to the mainland. A reinsurer… in Zürich sends a Swiss expert who speaks no Russian to say whether the ground gave way or was made to. That night the black purga begins and nobody can go out. Next morning the man who was going to show him something is found frozen in the basement, his arms round a pipe that burns.
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The House Ate the Staircase
The Círculo Mercantil of Sarnia is opening its new dining room, its electric light and a whole house bought from the neighbours, and on the night of the opening sixty members watch a white shape cross the glass screen at a height where there is no… floor. Before the coffee, a doctor is found dead at the bottom of the well of a demolished staircase. The court sends an expert to say whether the man could have fallen on his own. The door was found locked, the key was found hanging on its hook, and in the porter's book there is no line for the return.
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Nobody Counts by Looking
The Charity Clothing Guild of Tornellosa is four women, eleven years of Thursdays and a bedspread of eighty-one crochet rosettes that has just won the Provincial Council's prize. An unsigned letter reaches the court: it says the bedspread was bought… in a workshop and the thousand pesetas were collected by deceit. The court seals the room and sends an expert to rule on who made the work. Nobody is dead, nothing is missing and no door has been forced. But the bedspread has eighty-one rosettes and the room has four pairs of hands.
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Nobody Weighs the Way Out
Chronos45 sells trips of exactly forty-five minutes into the past, with a register of entry, a register of exit and a customs desk that weighs everybody on the way back. On Friday nine people went out to the London of October 1934 and eight came… back. Edmund Whitmore, who founded the firm, left the party for twenty minutes and turned up dead in the cellar of an empty house in Fitzrovia. The half hour in which it could have happened is covered minute by minute by seven witnesses, and none of them is lying. Inspector Constance Quayle does not investigate alibis: she weighs what people carry.
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Houses Do Not Stretch
Bellabrida is closed off by the fever and the flood has taken the bridge. Doña Casilda Mansilla is dead, and her will reaches the court with a new wafer and one line too many. Aristide Valmont must say whether that line is hers, and he must do it… from the far bank of the river, with whatever crosses on Tuesdays and Fridays in the mail basket. The reader is handed the same papers on the same day he is: a sketch plan, six statements nobody could agree on, and a photograph.
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Nobody Is Wrong in Formation
On the night of the fair ball, seven pieces of silver vanish from a case locked with two keys, and by the next day the sergeant has fourteen statements that contradict one another without anybody lying. Duarte Cabral de Meneses was hired only to be… seen in the ballroom. He stays because in a whole village that has the time wrong there is one thing that is never wrong: the mail train.
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What Is Said Without Fear
A photographer writes to Duarte Cabral de Meneses to tell him something, then asks him to wait until the next day. That morning he is found dead in a cubicle at the spa, in the bath his own ticket called for. Duarte stays on for the eight days he… has been paid in advance, talking nonsense with twelve guests, because nobody lies in the trimmings.
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First the Lamp Goes Down
At the press house there is an October rule that nobody explains: first the lamp goes down and then the man, and never alone. On the night Mercedes comes back after twenty-three years, she goes down alone. Aristide Valmont had arrived the day before… to value the property, and he stays because the cellar does not tell the same story as the family.
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Three Things Put Straight
A landslip cuts off a house on a mountain pass with seven people inside it and twelve degrees of frost. In the morning the mistress of the house is found dead in the conservatory, sitting in her chair, and nobody has come in or gone out all night. Aristide Valmont, a court-appointed expert whom the snow has turned off his road, stands looking at three things somebody put straight that did not need putting straight at all.
What you will find
Puzzle mysteries: a closed setting, a small group of people and a problem that looks impossible. A mountain house cut off by snow, a wine press in the middle of the harvest, a spa hotel, a palace during a festival, a village left without its bridge by the flood.
There is not always a body. Sometimes the puzzle is who wrote one line of a will, or who really made a prize-winning quilt. What is never missing is the question underneath: what happened, and how do we know.
Clues in plain sight
These stories play fair: what the detective sees, the reader sees too, and the solution rests on things that were on the page. You can read them straight through and let yourself be carried along, or with a pencil, noting who said what. Both work.
Long short story or short novella
Some are long short stories and others come close to a novella. Each story page says how many minutes it takes and how many chapters it has, and the site remembers where you stopped: they are written for one sitting, but you do not have to read them in one go.
Where to start
If this is your first time, start with a short one: free mystery stories lists them from the shortest to the longest. If you would rather follow a detective, detective stories groups them by who solves the case.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to read them in order?
No. Each story sets up and solves its own case. When several share a detective there is a suggested order, but you can start anywhere.
Are they free?
Yes, all of them, in full and without signing up.
Which languages are they in?
Spanish, Portuguese and English. The language switcher on every page opens the same story in the other language.