The Chinese Room Author:Vivian Connell The Chinese Room starts out with a great premise for a murder mystery: Nicholas Bude is a wealthy London Banker, 1940's, with a wife in the country and a mistress in the city whose life is disrupted when a servant’s daughter commits suicide. — It develops that the dead girl was in the habit of writing anonymous threatening letters to herself, a... more »nd while discussing this with a doctor helping the police, Bude gets into a heated argument about loneliness and lonely minds.
He makes a bet with the doctor that anyone with a normal mind (himself, for instance) could send himself threatening letters without being driven to suicide, and the doctor dares him to prove it, which he agrees to do, in front of witnesses. Then he starts getting anonymous threatening letters. Is he writing them himself, without knowing it, is someone trying to drive him to suicide or setting him up for murder?« less