Murder most foul! Kidnapping most treacherous! Larceny, swindling, poisoning, and suicide! Mystery tales of the nineteenth and early twentieth century teem with some of the most nefarious crimes ever imagined. A Treasury of Classic Mystery Stories collects twenty-three masterpieces from this golden age of mystery fiction—tales that laid the foundations for mystery fiction being written today. So sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in some of the best-told mystery stories of all time by some of the greatest writers of the past two centuries—or, see how sharp you yourself are at solving some of the most baffling mysteries in the annals of literature, including: The Murders in the Rue Morgue—Regarded as the first modern detective story, this tale by Edgar Allan Poe introduces C. Auguste Dupin, dilettante detective par excellence, who separates the red herrings from the real clues to solve a beastly murder. The Fenchurch Street Mystery—Baroness Orczy’s clever “man in the corner” solves a baffling murder mystery without leaving the comfort of his seat—proving his dictum that “there is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.” The Hound of the Baskervilles—In Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous tale, Sherlock Holmes sifts the sensible from the supernatural to assist the aristocratic Baskervilles, who for centuries have been cursed by a giant spectral hound whose appearance always heralds death and tragedy. The Big Bow Mystery—Considered the first and best locked-room mystery, Israel Zangwill’s short novel confronts retired Scotland Yard Inspector Grodman—and the reader—with an impossible murder and a set of fiendishly difficult clues that he must piece together to save a wrongly imprisoned suspect’s life. Justice Ends at Home—What seems like a cut-and-dried murder case to New York defense attorney Simon Leg and his assistant Dan Culp proves to be anything but when hunches and clues dovetail for a suspenseful race-against-the-clock finale as only Rex Stout could write it. The Mysterious Affair at Styles—In the novel that introduced him Agatha Christie’s Belgian sleuth, Hercule Poirot, must get to the bottom of a murder whose perepetrator is not as transparently obvious as clues would make it seem.
