Great Detectives (1984) Anthology

✍ Scribed by David Willis McCullough

• Book ID: 110588776
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 603 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN: 0394540654

✦ Synopsis

Raymond Chandler once called murder a “simple art.” Maybe so, but detection is a decidedly elegant one, elegant in the way a mathematician calls a tidy solution to a particularly knotty problem elegant. Sherlock Holmes used logic, Father Brown an ability to put himself in the murderer’s skin, Lord Peter a knack for intuitive bursts of inspiration, Sam Spade an instinct to distrust his suspects only so far, Lew Archer a belief that more crime can be explained by Freud than Blackstone. But more central than the methods and mannerisms of the great detectives is the fact that they cut through confusion and chaos, solve puzzles, and set things right to make the world seem quite a logical place after all. They restore order. As for those methods and mannerisms—there, for the readers of detective stories, is where the fun lies.

Includes the following 19 stories:

ISRAEL ZANGWILL—The Big Bow Mystery (Novella)
DOROTHY L. SAYERS—The Queen’s Square
G. K. CHESTERTON—The Invisible Man
AGATHA CRISTIE—The Girl in the Train
ROBERT VAN GULIK—The Murder on Lotus Pond
WILLIAM FAULKNER—Hand Upon the Waters
DASHIELL HAMMETT—A Man Called Spade
DASHIELL HAMMETT—They Can Only Hang You Once
DASHIELL HAMMETT—Too Many Have Lived
EDMUND CRISPIN—The Hunchback Cat
RAYMOND CHANDLER—Trouble Is My Business
ELLERY QUEEN—The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln’s Clue
REX STOUT—See No Evil
RAY BRADBURY—Yesterday I Lived!
ROSS MACDONALD—The Chill (Novel)
P. D. JAMES—The Murder of Santa Claus
DONALD E. WESTLAKE—Never Shake a Family Tree
RUTH RENDELL—Death Notes (Novel)
ED MCBAIN—Sadie When She Died