The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time

by Otto Penzler

Book by

Genres: Mystery, Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Otto Penzler is an editor of mystery fiction in the United States, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City, where he lives.

Otto Penzler founded The Mysteriour Press in 1975 and was the publisher of The Armchair Detective, the Edgar-winning quarterly journal devoted to the study of mystery and suspense fiction, for seventeen years.

Penzler has won two Edgar Awards, for The Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection in 1977, and The Lineup in 2010. The Mystery Writers of America awarded him the prestigious Ellery Queen Award in 1994, and the Raven--the group's highest non-writing award--in 2003.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having previously read a fun little collection of Agatha Christie short stories, I was convinced that the short story form was an excellent format for mysteries. Accordingly, I picked up this book for reading at the beach, expecting it to also meet those expectations. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I don't know whether it was the fault of the alcohol I was drinking or the editor, but I found myself slogging through this book, hoping that the next story would be better than the one I was reading.

In the first place, this book is mistitled. I know that the definition of mystery can be pretty broad, but Hemingway's "The Killers," for example, or Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc.,"just don't fit into that category. A better title, I think, would have been "The 50 Greatest Mystery, Suspense, And Horror Stories Of All Time."

In the second place, quite a few of the selections in this book, no doubt for copyright reasons, are pretty old. For better or for worse, today's reader just doesn't have the same ideas of suspense and horror that readers from a century ago did. For example: imagine a bed in a gambling house whose top slowly comes down and smothers a sleeping drunkard. To me, a modern reader, this seems neither realistic nor particularly chilling. Yet the horror at this idea is the driving force behind one of the stories in the book.

This leads me to my third problem with the book. That story (about the bed) was by Wilkie Collins. Mr. Collins wrote a really fun and interesting mystery book called "The Moonstone," which I read and thoroughly enjoyed a few years ago. Yet, I found the particular story selected for this book to be somewhat uninteresting. In short, even when I came across a story by an author I knew I liked, such as Wilkie Collins or Patricia Highsmith or Stephen King, I still did not like the story. Not being an avid short story fan, I don't know if this is because I just prefer those author's longer-length works, or if it is because poor stories were selected over better ones.

In the end, I think much of my problem with this book comes down to a difference in the editor's definition of mystery and my own. If you have ever watched the TV series "The Twilight Zone," or "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," then you will have a pretty good definition of the editor's definition of mystery. Rather than always being about a crime to be solved, it seems to be more about having a "twist" of some kind at the end. Even in most of the stories where crimes were involved, the author's "twist" was the most important element of the story. If you've ever sat down and watched a bunch of episodes of "Twilight Zone" in a row, you know how tedious this "twist" thing can get after a while. That was what it was like reading all fifty of these stories.

There were some positive things about the book, however. Otherwise I would not have kept reading through to the end. Though I know it hasn't sounded like it, I did actually like some of the stories. The one in which the main character was the precursor to Perry Mason was particularly good. Also, the editor's note at the beginning of each story almost always made me excited to read the story and to find some other works by that author. I have half a mind to go through and read the editor's notes again, they were so interesting. Finally, the editor should be applauded for at least trying to work in some modern authors. Sometimes when one picks up mystery anthologies, one gets the idea that the mystery form is all but dead. The selection of modern authors, though much smaller than ones from the fifties and before, at least gave me some new names to look for at the library.

So, all in all, I read this book all the way through and found it sometimes tedious and occasionally interesting. Though the book has its merits it is not, I think, a book any of my other reading friends would particularly enjoy.

[CP · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give it three stars for some of the stories that will stay with you such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter," Ellin's "Specialty of the House," Wilkie Collins' "A Terribly Strange Bed," Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League," O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation," and Stephen King's "Quitters, Inc."

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun collection of mystery stories, although titles like “50 greatest…” are always suspect. Some were great (Asimov wrote mysteries?! I need to read more! The Edith Wharton story was delightfully creepy. Elmore Leonard is hilarious). Others dragged on way too long and were not great. ( “The Absent Minded Coterie” and the Mickey Spillane story were not favorites of mine).

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid early anthology edited by Otto Penzler. Some great, a few not so much, but even the lesser stories were enjoyable reads. The stories encompassed a wide time span, going from Edgar Allen Poe to Elmore Leonard.

There was a short introduction to each story, but nothing like the detailed intros to his later anthologies. I would have preferred more information.

[Jeff Hobbs]

Read so far:

The purloined letter / Edgar Allan Poe --4
A terribly strange bed / Wilkie Collins --4
The three strangers / Thomas Hardy --3
The red-headed league / Arthur Conan Doyle --3
The corpus delicti / Melville Davisson Post --2
Gentlemen and players / E.W. Hornung --3
A journey / Edith Wharton --2
The leopard man's story / Jack London --3
A retrieved reformation / O. Henry --3
The problem of Cell 13 / Jacques Futrelle --3
The absent-minded coterie / Robert Barr --3
The invisible man / G.K. Chesterton --3
The infallible Godahl / Frederick Irving Anderson --3
The adventure of the unique "Hamlet" / Vincent Starrett --3
The Gioconda smile / Aldous Huxley --3
Haircut / Ring Lardner --3
The killers / Ernest Hemingway --3
The hands of Mr. Ottermole / Thomas Burke --3
The little house at Croix-Rousse / Georges Simenon --2
The case of the missing patriarchs / Logan Clendening --2
Clerical error / James Gould Cozzens --3
The two bottles of relish / Lord Dunsany--3
The chaser / John Collier --2
The perfect crime / Ben Ray Redman --3
Yours truly, Jack the Ripper / Robert Bloch --3
The blind spot / Barry Perowne --3
The catbird seat / James Thurber --4
Recipe for murder / C.P. Donnel Jr. --2
The nine mile walk / Harry Kemelman --3
Kill or be killed / Ogden Nash --2
The specialty of the house / Stanley Ellin --2
Nearly perfect / A.A. Milne --3
The Gettysburg Bugle / Ellery Queen --3
The last spin / Evan Hunter --
Stand up and die! / Mickey Spillane --
A new leaf / Jack Ritchie (NA)--
The snail-watcher / Patricia Highsmith --3
The long way down / Edward D. Hoch --
The man who never told a lie / Isaac Asimov --3
I have / John Gardner (NA)--
Quitters, Inc. / Stephen King --
Horn man / Clark Howard --3
*The new girl friend / Ruth Rendell --2
By the dawn's early light / Lawrence Block --
Iris / Stephen Greenleaf --
High Darktown / James Ellroy --
The Pietro Andromache / Sara Paretsky --
Soft monkey / Harlan Ellison --
The hand of Carlos / Charles McCarry (NA)--
Karen makes out / Elmore Leonard--

[Cambra · Rating 3 out of 5]

2/2 Brazilian vacation reads.

Otto's gots him a résumé for sure, but that does not = justification for some of these choices ("Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", I'm looking at you...)

[Alex]

The 50 Greatest Mysteries of All Time by Otto Penzler (2003)

[Eric Bowers · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really mix. Some great, some not so great.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of the fifty was The Specialty of the House by Stanley Ellin.