The 5 Classic Mystery Books That Inspired ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery’

While the first two Knives Out films by Rian Johnson are filled with subtle references to classic mystery novels, Wake Up Dead Man—now playing in select theaters—is far more direct. In a scene where Detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) and Father Jud (Josh O’Connor) are looking for clues, they find a list of five mystery books that relate to the case at hand. 

The scene feels like Johnson telling his audience: if you like this movie, please check these stories out. All of these books have ties to the film, but some of those ties are clearer than others. Here’s our list of the five books, ranked by how much we think a Knives Out fan will enjoy them. 

1. The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe
2. Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers
3. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
4. The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
5. The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe

Published in 1841, this is widely considered to be the first-ever detective story. It establishes the dynamic of the brilliant deductionist accompanied by the incredulous everyman narrator, a dynamic that writers like Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle would later come to perfect. 

Like Wake Up Dead Man, this short story centers around a seemingly impossible locked door mystery, and it has a Gothic vibe that WUDM embraces fully. The central puzzle in Rue Morgue sadly doesn’t hold up very well today, but most readers are perfectly willing to cut Poe some slack; after all, he was one of the first guys to ever do it.

Whose Body? by Dorothy L Sayers

Published in 1923, the debut novel of Sayers introduces the detective Lord Peter Wimsey, a man who is in many ways a parody of famous detective characters before him. Whose Body? is notable in how meta it is: it was written when the mystery genre was firmly established, where writers could poke fun at its established tropes and trust their readers to follow along. 

It’s easy to see why Johnson gave this book a shoutout—even beyond the movie’s third-act parallels with the bathtub scene here, it’s easy to see traces of Sayers’s humor in Johnson’s script. Just as Sayers played around with mystery book tropes, Johnson plays around with the tropes of mystery films. 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Published in 1926, Roger Ackroyd stunned its audiences with its final reveal that broke the rules of what a whodunnit novel was allowed to do. Not everyone appreciated the ending, but enough were impressed to make this one of Christie’s best-known, most beloved novels even 100 years later. 

This is the book whose connection to Wake Up Dead Man is most obvious: if you’re familiar with this book’s twist, then seeing its title referenced directly will make you look at one particular character with far more suspicion.

The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr

Johnson is a huge fan of Carr, even writing the introduction for the 2024 re-issue of another one of his detective novels, The Problem of the Wire Cage. 

“The most famous of Carr’s locked room mysteries is his masterpiece The Hollow Man,” Johnson wrote, “which features a little meta mini-lecture from the detective on the solving of locked room crimes. It’s creepy and ingenious and delightful and … should probably be your next book.”

It’s that lecture on locked room crimes that turns out to be crucial to Wake Up Dead Man. Benoit Blanc references it outright, and Chief Scott (Mila Kunis) even reads the book herself and has an epiphany during that scene. Perhaps more so than any other on this list, The Hollow Man is a book that this movie really wants its audience to check out. 

The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

The clearest connection here to Wake Up Dead Man is The Murder at the Vicarage’s priest main character. Reverend Leonard Clement does not have as angsty an arc as Father Jud, but he’s placed in a similar predicament. The book’s murder victim, an unpleasant man disliked by most of the town, also shares a few qualities with WUDM’s Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin).

While Roger Ackroyd is more famous for its big twist, Vicarage is the stronger novel overall. Its characters are more charming and layered, its mystery is more engaging throughout, and the book introduces Christie’s underrated recurring detective character, Miss Marple. Thematically and setting-wise, Vicarage is the book on this list that WUDM evokes the most.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is now playing in select theaters and will release on Netflix on December 12. See if it’s playing near you here. You can now stream Knives Out on Amazon Prime Video and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery on Netflix.