Golden Age Whodunits by Otto Penzler
Golden Age Whodunits by Otto Penzler
English | 2024 | Mystery & Thriller
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.
Includes:
Stephen Vincent Benét, The Amateur of Crime
Anthony Boucher, Black Murder
Fredric Brown, Crisis, 1999
Mignon G. Eberhart, The Flowering Face
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Dance
C. Daly King, The Episode of the Tangible Illusion
Ring Lardner, Haircut
Stuart Palmer, Fingerprints Don’t Lie
Melville Davisson Post, The Witness in the Metal Box
Ellery Queen, Man Bites Dog
Clayton Rawson, The Clue of the Tattooed Man
Helen Reilly, The Phonograph Murder
Mary Roberts Rinehart, The Lipstick
Vincent Starrett, Too Many Sleuths
T.S. Stribling, A Passage to Benares
