Golden Age Detective Stories (An American Mystery Classic)

by Otto Penzler (Editor)

Overview

The greatest detectives of the Golden Age investigate the most puzzling crimes of the era

Sometimes, the police aren’t the best suited to solve a crime. Depending on the case, you may find that a retired magician, a schoolteacher, a Broadway producer, or a nun have the necessary skills to suss out a killer. Or, in other cases, a blind veteran, or a publisher, or a hard-drinking attorney, or a mostly-sober attorney… or, indeed, any sort of detective you could think of might be able to best the professionals when it comes to comprehending strange and puzzling murders. 

At least, that’s what the authors from the Golden Age of American mystery fiction would have you think. For decades in the middle of the twentieth century, the country’s best-selling authors produced delightful tales in which all types of eccentrics used rarified knowledge to interpret confounding clues. And for even longer, in the decades that have followed, these characters have continued to entertain new audiences with every new generation that discovers them. 

Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler selects some of the greatest American short stories from era. With authors including Ellery Queen, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Anthony Boucher, this collection is a treat for those who know and love this celebrated period in literary history, and a great introduction to its best writers for the uninitiated.

Includes discussion guide questions for use in book clubs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613162170
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	07/06/2021
Series:	An American Mystery Classic
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	772,633
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Otto Penzler, the creator of American Mystery Classics, is also the founder of The Mysterious Press (1975); MysteriousPress.com (2011), an electronic-book publishing company; and New York City’s Mysterious Bookshop (1979). He has won a Raven, the Ellery Queen Award, two Edgars (for the Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection, 1977, and The Lineup, 2010), and lifetime achievement awards from NoirCon and The Strand Magazine. He has edited more than 70 anthologies and written extensively about mystery fiction.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Charlotte Armstrong (Detective: Mike Russell) The Enemy 5

Anthony Boucher (Detective: Sister Ursula) The Stripper 33

Mignon G. Eberhart (Detective: Susan Dare) Postiche 48

Erle Stanley Gardner (Detective: Perry Mason) The Case of the Crimson Kiss 71

H. F. Heard (Detective: Mr. Mycroft) The Enchanted Garden 123

Baynard Kendrick (Detective: Captain Duncan Maclain) 5-4=Murderer 155

Frances Richard Lockridge (Detectives: Mr. & Mrs. North) There's Death for Remembrance 172

Stuart Palmer (Detective: Hildegarde Withers) The Monkey Murder 190

Ellery Queen (Detective: Ellery Queen) The Adventure of the African Traveler 209

Patrick Quentin (Detectives: Peter & Iris Duluth) Puzzle for Poppy 232

Clayton Rawson (Detective: The Great Merlini) From Another World 249

Craig Rice (Detective: John J. Malone) Good-bye, Good-bye! 281

Mary Roberts Rinehart (Detective: Hilda Adams) Locked Doors 307

Cornell Woolrich (Detective: Striker) The Mystery in Room 913 358

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/10/2021

Fourteen authors previously represented by their novels in the American Mystery Classics series demonstrate their skills in shorter form in this superior anthology. Cornell Woolrich, best known for his tales of passion and despair, changes gears with the puzzler “The Mystery in Room 913.” Multiple occupants of a hotel room jump out of its ninth-floor window, leaving suicide notes behind, but the house detective is convinced something else is going on. Clayton Rawson perfects hiding a clue fairly in “From Another World,” in which his magician-sleuth, the Great Merlini, must solve a fatal stabbing in a room whose door and window were sealed with paper. In addition to well-known contributors, such as Ellery Queen and Erle Stanley Gardner, Penzler presents memorable tales from the lesser-known, such as H.F. Heard, whose reimagined Sherlock Holmes appears in “The Enchanted Garden,” and Bayard Kendrick, creator of the blind detective Capt. Duncan Maclain, who demonstrates his considerable abilities in “5 – 4 = Murderer.” This sampler is an easy gateway to other volumes in this high-quality series. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"For some readers, the book will be a walk down memory lane, or a way to reconnect with writers they haven’t visited in a while; for others, it’s a wonderful introduction to some new writers—people who not only excelled at mystery fiction, but who also helped create and define the genre. The book belongs on the shelf of any true mystery fan, and in the collection of every library’s mystery section."

Booklist

2021-05-05
Think the English have a monopoly on the classic, fair-play detective stories that flourished between the two world wars? Think again, says this lineup of 14 all-American reprints dating from 1925 to 1955.

The keynotes here are variety and consistency. There are classics like Ellery Queen’s brainy “The Adventure of the African Traveler” and rediscoveries like “Postiche,” by Mignon G. Eberhart, whom editor Penzler aptly describes as the Mary Higgins Clark of her day. Fans of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason and Anthony Boucher’s Sister Ursula will find the sleuths in the rare short stories “The Case of the Crimson Kiss” and “The Stripper.” Pamela and Jerry North meet murder at a class reunion in Frances and Richard Lockridge’s “There’s Death for Remembrance,” and the Great Merlini solves a locked-room murder in Clayton Rawson’s “From Another World.” H.F. Heard’s “The Enchanted Garden” is a floridly written Sherlock-ian pastiche about the mysterious Mr. Mycroft; Chicago lawyer John J. Malone talks a suicidal woman off a ledge and solves her actress mother’s apparent suicide in the pungent “Goodbye, Goodbye!” Neighbors come together to help solve the case of a poisoned dog in Charlotte Armstrong’s “The Enemy”; a much wealthier dog narrowly escapes a second poisoning in Patrick Quentin’s “Puzzle for Poppy.” The principals in Baynard Kendrick’s “5-4=Murderer” draw no closer together than you’d expect people at a truck stop to do; the family home in Mary Roberts Rinehart’s “Locked Doors” might as well be a prison. In the longest story, Cornell Woolrich’s house detective investigates a series of fatal leaps years apart from a single hotel window in “The Mystery in Room 913.” The only serious disappointment is the absence of John Dickson Carr and Rex Stout.

So much for variety. What’s consistent is the quality, which is exemplary.

Kirkus Reviews