The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries by Otto Penzler, Paperback, 9780307743961 | Buy online at The Nile
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The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

Author: Otto Penzler   Series: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Original

Paperback

Here are 45 of the best stories and the major writers who ever appeared in celebrated pulps like "Black Mask, Dime Detective," and "Detective Fiction Weekly." These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives.

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PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

Here are 45 of the best stories and the major writers who ever appeared in celebrated pulps like "Black Mask, Dime Detective," and "Detective Fiction Weekly." These are the classic tales that created the genre and gave birth to hard-hitting detectives.

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Description

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. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more

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.

Edgar 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. 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. 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.
 
Featuring
   • Unconventional means of murder
   • Pilfered jewels
   • Shocking solutions
 
Includes
   • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and            the first locked-room mystery
   • Masters of the short story form: Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and       Stanley Ellin

A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL

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Critic Reviews

“"Unparalleled. . . . This is the ideal bedside book for mystery fans: packed with short, challenging tales of murder and deduction, easily consumed before the eyes flicker. . . . Many of the stories are classics (and worth reading again), but there are a number of writers here whose stories aren't well known, so there's much to discover." ”

“The best gift ever for the fan of mysteries impossible to solve. . . . Penzler, an acclaimed mystery writer, has a gift for bringing back talented writers from historical obscurity.”
     —The Seattle Times

"This collection delivers more than 900 pages of wonderful reading. . . . Every fan of old-time detection will want this book."
     --The Washington Post

“Unparalleled. . . . This is the ideal bedside book for mystery fans: packed with short, challenging tales of murder and deduction, easily consumed before the eyes flicker. . . . Many of the stories are classics (and worth reading again), but there are a number of writers here whose stories aren't well known, so there's much to discover.”
     —Shelf Awareness

"A wide-ranging collection of the impossible. . . . This intelligently assembled anthology of 68 short stories will be catnip for fair play fans. . . . 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. Gurdon, Augustus Muir, and Vincent Cornier, whose ingenious work is less likely to be encountered in other anthologies."
     --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Connoisseurs of this eccentric, demanding form will find this an indispensable resource, a pearl beyond price."
     --Kirkus Reviews

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About the Author

Otto Penzler is a two-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the editor of numerous anthologies, among them eight other Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, most recently The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. He is the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.

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Product Details

Publisher
Penguin Random House LLC | Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Published
28th October 2014
Pages
960
ISBN
9780307743961

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