Who wrote 'The Big Bow Mystery', often called the first locked-room mystery?

Israel Zangwill wrote The Big Bow Mystery, an early and influential locked-room mystery.

The novel was first serialised in The Star newspaper in 1891 and published in book form in 1892. Set in London’s East End, it revolves around a murder committed in a room that appears to be securely locked from the inside. The seemingly impossible circumstances force investigators and readers to question the physical evidence, the timing of events, and the reliability of apparent explanations.

Zangwill is better known today for his writing about Jewish immigrant life and London society, but The Big Bow Mystery earned a lasting place in crime-fiction history. It helped popularise the locked-room format, in which the central puzzle is not only who committed the crime but how the crime could have happened at all.

Calling it the first locked-room mystery is a common shorthand rather than an uncontested literary law. Earlier stories, including works associated with Edgar Allan Poe, contain impossible-crime or locked-room elements. Still, The Big Bow Mystery is widely cited as one of the earliest full-length locked-room novels, making Israel Zangwill the canonical answer. G. K. Chesterton and John Dickson Carr became important later writers in the tradition.