12 American Detective Stories (Oxford Twelves)

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Product Description

Murder, kidnapping, and theft are the principal crimes committed in these twelve American detective stories. The victim may be an innocent baby or a double-crossing mobster, the setting a department store or death cell at the state prison. However, the detectives intellectual and intuitive powers must be unfailing, whether the important clue is a single bullet or a tiny splinter of wood.
Twelve American Detective Stories is a virtual cornucopia of whodunits from the true masters of the craft including Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Craig Rice, Ellery Queen, and Raymond Chandler. Edited by acclaimed mystery writer Edward D. Hoch, this anthology is the first stop for newcomers to the genre. Containing some genuine rarities, Twelve American Detective Stories is also an intriguing volume for the seasoned reader.

Amazon.com Review

Editor of numerous annual collections and an accomplished mystery writer himself, Edward D. Hoch illustrates genres ranging from impossible crime to hard-boiled detective fiction with 12 tales from America's distinguished mystery authors. Hoch's anthology chronicles detective fiction's development from the mid-18th century through the early 1960s. If you're familiar with the classics and are looking for lesser-known selections from such character sleuths as Violet Strange, Uncle Abner, Trevis Tarrant, Sir Henry Merrivale, and Philip Marlowe, this is the book to buy.

Twelve American Detective Stories opens appropriately with a more obscure work by the forerunner of mystery, Edgar Allan Poe. In "Thou Art the Man" (1844) a murderer is exposed in a ghastly yet amusing turn of events.

Jacques Futrelle's "Thinking Machine," Professor Van Dusen, is master of impossible crime in 'The Stolen Rubens' (1907). C. Daly King's "The Episode of the Nail and the Requiem" (1935), a fair play puzzle, solves the conundrum of a sealed studio with a bloody corpse sprawled inside--the gem of the bunch. Ellery Queen remains faithful to the genre in 1948's "The Dauphin's Doll," a seemingly impossible jewel robbery.

Hailed as the first female mystery writer, Anna Katharine Green brings brilliant socialite Violet Strange to center stage in "The Second Bullet" (1915). Craig Rice, née Georgiana Ann Randolph, was briefly one of the best-known female authors of the 1940s. "His Heart Could Break" (1943) features criminal lawyer John J. Malone, who discovers the real motive behind his client's "suicide."

Raymond Chandler delivers his famous pulp-fiction gumshoe prose in "The Pencil" (1959) as hard-drinking, womanizing private eye Philip Marlowe thwarts a mob plot, while a desperate murderer thinks he can outwit the cops in "One Drop of Blood" (1962), by the "father of classic noir," Cornell Woolrich.

Also featured: Melvill Davisson Post's "The Age of Miracles" (1916); T.S. Stribling's "The Shadow" (1934); "The House in Goblin Wood" (1947) by Carter Dickson (a.k.a. John Dickson Carr); and Mary Roberts Rinehart's "The Splinter" (1955). Introduction and author biographies are included. --Brina Bolanz