Strange Cases: A Selective Guide to Speculative Mystery Fiction

by Jill Vassilakos-Long, Jill H. Vassilakos

The pleasures of mystery novels and speculative fiction double when the two genres meet in a single book. Placing a compelling mystery story within a paranormal context adds even more mystery to the story. While these books are popular with readers, locating them can be a challenge. They do not fit into any single category, so they get scattered through collections and store shelves, with some series shelved in science fiction, some in horror, and some in mystery.

Organized alphabetically by author name and series title, this detailed guide offers readers a one-stop reference and resource to approximately 700 supernatural and speculative mysteries, with most (about 80 percent) being series titles. It covers mysteries crossed with various types of speculative fiction, Mysteries with a future settings; mysteries involving sorcery; mysteries set in other worlds; mysteries featuring ghosts; and mysteries featuring vampires.

Focus is on the best, most representative, most current and easily accessible publications, with an emphasis on series novels. Most have been released in the past decade, with select classic speculative mysteries also annotated. Each series entry names the scene of the crime; identifies the detective and his or her chief associates; notes the series premise; comments on characteristics, features, and overall series quality; and discusses the critical response. Individual series titles (The Cases) are then listed and described in series (or chronological) order. Additional access to titles is provided through detailed indexes (book titles, protagonist names, series titles and genres crossed).

Academic, public, and high school librarians will welcome this guide as a valuable reference, readers' advisory, and collection development tool. For those who want to read speculative mysteries in sequence, this is an essential guide; and for those seeking background information on speculative mysteries to guide their reading or collection

704 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you really love speculative mysteries, this book will be a great guide and reference for you. It identifies hundreds of books and stories in the crossover area between these genres, provides annotations for each, and includes other details like a description of the detective, character lists, and discussion questions.

For other readers, however, this might be a little overwhelming. This is a big book, and there's so much information that sometimes things feel a little disorganized. It's hard to imagine many readers who would need some of this detail. When we get almost 700 pages of material, it would be nice to get a few shorter lists with some suggested starting points for the more casual fan of this kind of work.

And one more minor complaint--the authors admit that this is a work in progress and that they haven't located every speculative mystery out there. Given some of the more obscure books that they locate (including a few that I think it's a stretch to identify as mysteries), some of the oversights seem odd: Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Jonathan Lethem's Gun, with Occasional Music, and Richard K. Morgan's Thirteen for instance.

Still, when all is said and done, this is an extremely thorough, well-indexed reference covering a popular area of literature that has previously not been addressed. Libraries probably ought to own it.