The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime

✍ Scribed by Sims, Michael

• Book ID: 108631640
• Publisher: Penguin
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 227 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

An exclusive collection - the first- ever gathering of rogues from the gaslight era

collected here for the first time: the best crime fiction from the gaslight era. All the legendary thieves are presentArs?ne Lupin and A. J. Raffles, Colonel Clay and Simon Carne, Romney Pringle, Get Rich Quick Wallingford, and the Infallible Godahlburgling London and Paris, conning New York and Ostend, laughing all the way to the bank. Also featured are stories by distinguished writers from outside the mystery and detective genres, including Sinclair Lewis, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, and William Hope Hodgson. Library Journal Sims (Adam's Navel: A Natural and Cultural History of the Human Form) has compiled a dozen stories focusing not on detectives but on thieves and con artists. These tales cover the period between the mid-1890s and the early 1920s and feature such well-known characters as Grant Allen's Colonel Clay, George Randolph Chester's Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, Edgar Wallace's Four Square Jane, Ernest William Hornung's Raffles, and Frederick Irving Anderson's infallible Godahl. There are also stories by authors who don't write mysteries (e.g., Sinclair Lewis, O. Henry, and Arnold Bennett). All in all, a unique collection that is fun to read and evokes a bygone period of crime fiction. Sims's introduction and notes to each story are well written and informative. Recommended for all mystery collections. —Morris Hounion