Golden Age Whodunits
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Jul 2, 2024
-
- $9.99
-
- Pre-Order
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Fifteen puzzling tales from the masters of the mystery genre
Depending on who you ask, the term “whodunit” was first coined sometime around 1930, but the literary form predates that name by several decades. Still, it was in the years between the two World Wars—the so-called “Golden Age” of mystery fiction—that the style flourished. Short mysteries were published far and wide by a variety of authors, not just those primarily associated with the genre. They appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, The New Yorker, and other high-end periodicals that still exist today. These tales were, in short, among the most popular diversions in literature and were of the highest caliber.
In this volume, Edgar Award–winning anthologist Otto Penzler collects some of the finest American whodunits of the era, including household names and welcome rediscoveries. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ellery Queen, and Mary Roberts Rinehart are all included, as are Ring Lardner, Melville Davisson Post, and Helen Reilly. The result is a cross section of the whodunit tale in the years that made it a staple in mystery fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Penzler follows up 2023's Golden Age Bibliomysteries with another stellar anthology that places stories from the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Stephen Vincent Bénet beside works from the biggest names in 1920s and '30s detective fiction. Bénet impresses with "The Amateur of Crime," an ingenious closed-circle puzzle about a college student who uses his obsession with crime stories to help solve a murder. Impossible crime master Clayton Rawson makes a major impression in just four pages with "The Clue of the Tattooed Man," in which the Great Merlini solves one of his trickiest cases. "The Dance"—one of only two mystery stories Fitzgerald wrote—is another highlight, blending his gift for social satire (the protagonist fears small towns because "there was a whole series of secret implications, significances and terrors, just below the surface, of which I knew nothing") with a frisky crime plot. Other entries, from genre fiction maestros including Fredric Brown and Ellery Queen, are up to par; there's not a weak link in the bunch. For classic mystery fans, this is a must.
More Books by Otto Penzler