Author: Martin H Greenberg
Charles G Waugh/
Publisher: Jaico
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 325
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8179920372
Description
Each story in this highly entertaining collection is significant for its contribution to the development of crime solving literature. There are ghastly crimes committed in the dark of night and master detectives at work to insure that justice is served.
In a story by Thomas Hardy, we are introduced to a thief who outwits his hangman, and in an attack on civic self-righteousness, Mark Twain shows us a man who succeeds in stealing virtue from an entire town.
The nineteenth century is considered by many the Golden Age of the modern detective story. From the birth of the genre through Edger Allen Poe’s C Auguste Dupin, to the most famous clue seeking sleuth of them all, Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, a variety of literary minds turned to crime writing.
Other writers in this collection include the great American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, Wilkie Collins-often called the father of the English detective story, -and Grant Allen, best remembered for his humorous stories of Colonel Clay, the first heroic rogue character of short crime fiction.
In total, there are 15 stories of criminal mystery and detection included in this volume; enough clue seeking and cleverness in the pursuit of justice to please the most avid devotee to the genre.
Contents
Introduction
Mr. Higginbotham’s Catastrophe
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Purloined Letter
Edgar Allan Poe
A Terribly Strange Bed
Wilkie Collins
Murder Under the Microscope
William Russell
The Three Strangers
Thomas Hardy
Gallegher
Richard Harding Davis
The Red-Headed League
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Cheating the Gallows
Israel Zangwill
The Chemistry of Anarchy
Robert Barr
The Sheriff of Gullmore
Melville Davisson Post
The Episode of the Mexican Seer
Grant Allen
The Affair of the Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Co. Ltd.
Arthur Morrison
The Nameless Man
Rodriguez Ottolengui
His Defense
Harry Stillwell Edwards
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Mark Twain
About the Authors