Oxford Book Of American Detective Stories [The]

Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue launched the detective story in 1841. The genre began as a highbrow form of entertainment, a puzzle to be solved by a rational sifting of clues. In Britain, the stories became decidedly upper crust: the crime often committed in a world of manor homes and formal gardens, the blood on the Persian carpet usually blue. But from the beginning, American writers worked important changes on Poe's basic formula, especially in use of language and locale. As early as 1917, Susan Glaspell evinced a poignant understanding of motive in a murder in an isolated farmhouse. And with World War I, the Roaring '20s, the rise of organized crime and corrupt police with Prohibition, and the Great Depression, American detective fiction branched out in all directions, led by writers such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, who brought crime out of the drawing room and into the mean streets where it actually occurred. In The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories , Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert bring together thirty-three tales that illuminate both the evolution of crime fiction in the United States and America's unique contribution to this highly popular genre. Tracing its progress from elegant locked room mysteries, to the hard-boiled realism of the '30s and '40s, to the great range of styles seen today, this superb collection includes the finest crime writers, including Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Rex Stout, Ellery Queen, Ed McBain, Sue Grafton, and Hillerman himself. There are also many delightful surprises: Bret Harte, for instance, offers a Sherlockian pastiche with a hero named Hemlock Jones, and William Faulkner blends local color, authentic dialogue, and dark, twisted pride in An Error in Chemistry. We meet a wide range of sleuths, from armchair detective Nero Wolfe, to Richard Sale's journalist Daffy Dill, to Robert Leslie Bellem's wise-cracking Hollywood detective Dan Turner, to Linda Barnes's six-foot tall, red-haired, taxi-driving female P.I., Carlotta Carlyle. And we sample a wide variety of styles, from tales with a strongly regional flavor, to hard-edged pulp fiction, to stories with a feminist perspective. Perhaps most important, the book offers a brilliant summation of America's signal contribution to crime fiction, highlighting the myriad ways in which we have reshaped this genre. The editors show how Raymond Chandler used crime, not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a spotlight with which he could illuminate the human condition; how Ed McBain, in A Small Homicide, reveals a keen knowledge of police work as well as of the human sorrow which so often motivates crime; and how Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer solved crime not through blood stains and footprints, but through psychological insight into the damaged lives of the victim's family. And throughout, the editors provide highly knowledgeable introductions to each piece, written from the perspective of fellow writers and reflecting a life-long interest-not to say love-of this quintessentially American genre. American crime fiction is as varied and as democratic as America itself. Hillerman and Herbert bring us a gold mine of glorious stories that can be read for sheer pleasure, but that also illuminate how the crime story evolved from the drawing room to the back alley, and how it came to explore every corner of our nation and every facet of our lives. Containing 34 stories, this anthology explores the historical development of American detective fiction over a span of 150 years - from Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s to Marcia Muller in the 1990s. The selections represent variety in chronological period, narrative voice, geography, and milieu Description: 686 p. ; 23 cm. Contents: Murders in the Rue Morgue / Edgar Allan Poe -- Stolen cigar case / Bret Harte -- Problem of cell 13 / Jacques Futrelle -- Doomdorf mystery / Melville Davisson Post -- Missing: page thirteen / Anna Katharine Green -- Beauty mask / Arthur B. Reeve -- A jury of her peers / Susan Glaspell -- False Burton Combs / Carroll John Daly -- Keyboard of silence / Clinton H. Stagg -- A nose for news / Richard Sale -- Spider / Mignon G. Eberhart -- Leg man / Erle Stanley Gardner -- I'll be waiting / Raymond Chandler -- Footprint in the sky / John Dickson Carr -- Rear window / Cornell Woolrich -- Lipstick / Mary Roberts Rinehart -- Homicide highball / Robert Leslie Bellem -- An error in chemistry / William Faulkner -- From another world / Clayton Rawson -- A daylight adventure / T. S. Stribling -- See no evil / William Campbell Gault -- Crime must have a stop / Anthony Boucher -- Small homicide / Ed McBain -- Guilt-edged blonde / Ross Macdonald -- Christmas party / Rex Stout -- A matter of public notice / Dorothy Salisbury Davis -- Adventure of Abraham Lincoln's clue / Ellery Queen -- Words do not a book make / Bill Pronzini -- Christmas is for cops / Edward D. Hoch -- Lucky penny / Linda Barnes -- Parker shotgun / Sue Grafton -- Chee's witch / Tony Hillerman -- Benny's space / Marcia Muller. Other Titles: American detective stories Responsibility: edited by Tony Hillerman, Rosemary Herbert. This volume brings together 33 tales which illuminate the evolution of crime fiction in the USA and America's contribution to the popular genre. A range of styles are represented, from "locked room" mysteries to hard-boiled realism, with writers including Raymond Chandler and Ellery Queen. Collection of thirty-three tales that illustrate the evolution of the American detective short story, presenting examples of different sleuth types, demonstrating the use of regionalism, and encompassing the move into the use of ethnic detectives. Each entry includes its own introduction A collection of 34 detective stories, tracing the development of the genre from Edgar Allan Poe's The Murder in the Rue Morgue, through William Faulkner's An Error in Chemistry, up to the present