The primary locked room enigma in *Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery* witnesses writer-director Rian Johnson tapping into a rich literary tradition. The film draws heavily from writers like Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe, but one specific book is vital to the main puzzle: John Dickson Carr’s *The Hollow Man*.

This American author’s 1935 mystery novel, starring his recurring sleuth Gideon Fell, serves as a crucial text in Benoit Blanc’s (Daniel Craig) inquiry into the homicide at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude. But what is this significant book about?

What does *The Hollow Man* mean in *Wake Up Dead Man*?

At the outset of *Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery*, new resident and priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor) grapples with the baffling crime of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks’ (Josh Brolin) murder. Stabbed in the back within a confined space with a single entry point, all in the presence of a full congregation? It’s “the stuff of detective fiction,” as Blanc states, with the famed detective now involved.

During his investigation, Blanc references Carr’s novel *The Hollow Man* and the techniques of Gideon Fell, Carr’s fictional detective. A list Father Jud discovers in the church office reveals that *The Hollow Man* was the Spring Book Club selection for Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude — suggesting that the murderer drew inspiration from the book.

*The Hollow Man* provides “a syllabus of how to carry out the perfect crime.”

In *The Hollow Man*, a killer shoots a professor and disappears from a locked chamber, subsequently eliminating another victim in a public thoroughfare in front of witnesses, all without leaving tracks in the snow. Notably, there is one famous chapter, 17, that has become well-known for outlining the components of an impossible crime. Here, Carr presents Fell delivering this renowned “locked room lecture,” elucidating “the general mechanics” of arranging a murder (like Wicks’) under impossible conditions.

Blanc characterizes *The Hollow Man* in *Wake Up Dead Man* as “a syllabus of how to commit the perfect crime,” with Fell outlining various scenarios, such as:

1. It is not murder, but rather a series of coincidences culminating in an accident that appears to be murder.

2. It is murder, but the victim is driven to take their own life or accidentally perish.

3. It is murder, executed by a mechanical apparatus already set in the room and concealed within some innocuous piece of furniture.

Carr employed the locked room concept in numerous works, like *The Problem of the Wire Cage* (a murder occurring on a tennis court) and *The Crooked Hinge* and *Castle Skull* (murders that initially seem supernatural).

Agatha Christie’s *And Then There Were None*, Edgar Allan Poe’s *The Murders in the Rue Morgue* (both also included in Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude’s book club roster), Gaston Leroux’s *The Mystery of the Yellow Room*, Soji Shimada’s *The Tokyo Zodiac Murders*, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes in *The Adventure of the Speckled Band* and *The Adventure of the Crooked Man* — all locked room conundrums, impossible crimes solvable only by a true Jonathan Creek.

Or, a Benoit Blanc.

*Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery* is set to be released in select theaters on Nov. 26, followed by its debut on Netflix on Dec. 12.