The real treat is in the revelations of the gifts at misdirection from undeservedly obscure authors such as Julian Hawthorne (Nathaniel's son), J.E. Sayers, Erle Stanley Gardner, Georges Simenon, Dashiell Hammett and even a straight detective story from P.G. There are entries by familiar masters of the subgenre John Dickson Carr, Clayton Rawson, Edward Hoch as well as by mystery writers better known for other kinds of stories Dorothy L. Penzler's thoughtful introduction makes plain why this intelligently assembled anthology of 68 short stories will be catnip for fair play fans, since the locked-room story 'is the ultimate manifestation of the cerebral detective story.' He also notes that while the tales are 'astoundingly inventive,' disappointment will be inevitable when the solution is revealed, 'just as explanations of stage illusions exterminate the spell of magic.' Despite that caveat, Penzler has assembled a wide-ranging collection of the impossible, including murder in sealed environments or by an invisible killer who leaves no footprints in the sand or snow. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and Stanley Ellin

Masters of the short story form: Edward D.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and the first locked-room mystery.Among these pages you’ll find stories with evocative titles like “The Flying Death”, “The Man From Nowhere”, “A Terribly Strange Bed”, and “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny”, not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, and many more. In addition to the many classic examples of the form-a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth-this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances.

THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman’s study, an elevator car-nowhere is a crime completely impossible.Įdgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more

The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L.

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