Fourteen classic mysteries in which literature is a matter of life or death — selected by Otto Penzler, the world's foremost authority on crime fiction.
Of crime fiction's many sub-genres, none is so reflexive and so intriguing as the “bibliomystery”: stories in which the crime is set, somehow, in the world of books. A book scout turns sleuth. A literary heir kills to preserve an estate. Rare manuscripts, antiquarian dealers, librarians and the stacks themselves become the scene.
This volume gathers the finest of them from the Golden Age of mystery — the decades between the two World Wars. In Vincent Starrett's A Volume of Poe, a bookseller is murdered. In Ellery Queen's The Adventure of the Three R's, the detective tracks the disappearance of a Missouri author. And in Death Walks in Marble Halls, a killer stalks the stacks of the New York Public Library.
Alongside well-remembered names such as Cornell Woolrich and Anthony Boucher sit writers less read today — Carolyn Wells, James Gould Cozzens — and Penzler introduces each story himself, with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime among both the books and the crimes.
Perfect for
- Anyone who buys their mysteries in an actual bookshop — these are mysteries about bookshops
- Fans of Agatha Christie, Anthony Horowitz and the British Library Crime Classics
- Dipping into: fourteen complete stories, each with its own introduction
About the editor
Otto Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in New York, founder of the Mysterious Press, and creator of American Mystery Classics. He has won two Edgar Awards, the Ellery Queen Award and the Raven, and has edited more than seventy anthologies.
Also on our shelves
Its companion volume, Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, also edited by Penzler.
