While cooking dinner I found myself idly wondering whether there had ever been an instance of the classic locked room mystery in Trek lit, thinking it could be good fun within the various rules of Trek sci/tech ... can anyone think of one?
TNG: Contamination by John Vornholt. SCE: Malefactorum by Terri Osborne. Also, Ro's investigation in DS9: Lesser Evil may qualify, but the event she was investigating took place in the previous book, Cathedral.
I haven't read them yet, so I don't know if they're "locked room mysteries" but I do know that the TOS novel The Case of the Colonist's Corpse and the SCE novella Malefictorum are both murder mysteries.
Maybe in this context it should be the "shielded room mystery?" Of course, it's been established that transporters leave traces, so all you have to do is run a tricorder over the scene and say "Nope, no sign anyone beamed in or out," and you've still got your mystery.
I think "The Siege" by Peter David would qualify as one. And one of the two plots of "Vulcan's Glory" by D.C. Fontana might as well.
DS9 did a couple like this: "A Man Alone" (Ibudan's murder), and that one ep where the Vulcan goes crazy and shoots people with a gun that can beam bullets through walls.
D'oh, I can't believe I forgot about "Malefictorium" - I actually read that one. I wish I had the database brain of various forum members . And true, the beginning of "Immortail Coil" with the lab incident fits the pattern as well, but the mystery is explained away rather unceremonously later as the plot moves on to bigger issues ... "Contatmination" sounds like fun, I tend to enjoy the Worf/Troi pairing. I'll check out some of the other recommendations as well, thanks!
I thought it a delicious twist that had me completely by surprise. How about "A Hard Rain"? Not quite a locked holodeck story, because the Starfleet characters do enter and leave, but the mystery occurs in there, IIRC. http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/A_Hard_Rain