Sleuths of the Century

by Jon L. Breen (Editor), Ed Gorman (Editor), Various

Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Lord Peter Wimsey and Hercule Poirot, Matt Scudder and Easy Rawlins, Spenser and Dalgliesh - they stand among the most popular of twentieth-century heroes. And now the award-winning mystery novelist Ed Gorman and novelist-critic Jon L. Breen present a full century of the world's favorite sleuths in tales by such classic writers as G. K. Chesterton, Ellery Queen, Dorothy Sayers, and Agatha Christie as well as contemporary giants like Sharyn McCrumb, Walter Mosley, Ed McBain, Lawrence Block, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell. A hefty, handsome volume, Sleuths of the Century also offers serious suspense from Dashiell Hammett, Patricia Highsmith, Tony Hillerman, Rex Stout, Donald E. Westlake, and John D. MacDonald. Crossing the decades with a gallery of sleuths impeccably styled for every generation, this collection provides exciting, literate tales of detection and danger that will keep the reader on tenterhooks well into the next century.

Genres: Mystery, Short Stories

579 pages, Hardcover

First published February 6, 2000

Reviews

[Abbey]

**NEEDS READ AGAIN, INCOMPLETE***
SLEUTHS OF THE CENTURY, John L. Breen and Ed Gorman, Editors
2000, enormous compilation of short stories by reliable and interesting editors
[short story anthology - excellent A/4.5]

Entertaining batch of older stories by mostly still familiar authors, arranged chronologically, with strong short paragraphs of info by the editors preceeding each story.

From the Introduction:
"To represent the twentieth-century detective, we have selected twenty-five. They are male and female; straight and gay; tough and cozy; public, private, and purely amateur. Some of them are obvious consensus choices — who would leave out Wimsey or Queen or Archer or Mason or Wolfe or the cops of the 87th ? — while others may be more surprising. They have been arranged chronologically by first appearance in print. Only characters who appeared for the first time in the twentieth century have been considered. Thus, Holmes, though active well into the 1920s, does not qualify... ...If your favorite crime-solver isn't here, consider that with all the fictional detectives to debut since 1900 — there must thousands — we couldn't even include all of our own favorites, lot alone all that mght be considered deserving."

However, the arrangement and choice of characters is somewhat confusing - "first appearance in print" didn't appear to hold true when I checked the acknowledgements and published dates listed there - see my list below. And the editors appear to have made several particularly annoying choices of a late story being chosen to represent a detective than they might have, given their stated criteria in the Introduction. Many of their choices for detectives have several much earlier published short stories about that detective, many of which are entirely out of copyright and would, it seems, be available to use, yet they chose to use the later stories without any explanation (i.e., "Problem at Sea" the choice for Poirot, is an extremely late Christie short story - 1936; she published a lot of short stories in the 1920s - include about Poirot - but by 1940 had pretty much stopped writing for magazines). The same holds true for Sayers, Queen, Stout, Simenon, and Gardner. And I'm completely at a loss as to why Patricia Highsmith was chosen to be included - her only series character is that of Ripley, and he comes into four novels, no stories, and he was not a detective.

But even with those caveats, this was a very good anthology, a nice large volume to dip into from time to time. Perhaps the choices made were to include lesser-known stories about a particular detective? The authors in this anthology have been included in anthologies for many decades now, with innumerable editors choosing the same couple of stories over and over to represent a particular author (i.e., Furtrelle, Sayers, Queen). If that was the reasoning, then this is an excellent anthology; if it was not, then it's a very good one and worth a look-see.


STORIES INCLUDED:
[date is of copyright for each story, as listed at front of the book]

Sleuth: The Thinking Machine
The Phantom Motor, Jacques Furtelle
— classic spooky story, beautiful prose, typical sort of ending for the period

Sleuth: Father Brown
The Secret Garden, G. K. Chesterton
—

1936, Sleuth: Hercule Poirot
Problem at Sea, Agatha Christie
—

Sleuth: Lord Peter Wimsey
The Piscatorial Farce of the Stolen Stomach, Dorothy L. Sayers
—

[note: same as @ Christie]

1933, Sleuth: Ellery Queen
The Adventure of the Glass-Domed Clock, Ellery Queen
—

1944, Sleuth: Inspector Maigret
Madame Maigret's Admirer, Georges Simenon
—
[note: same as Christie]

1938, Sleuth:
The Wrong Problem, John Dickson Carr
—

1955, Sleuth: Nero Wolfe
The Next Witness, Rex Stout
—
[note: same as Christie]

1953, Sleuth: Perry Mason
The Case of the Irate Witness, Erle Stanley Gardner
—
[same as Christie but in spades! He published TONS of stories earlier than this about Mason]

1950, Sleuth:
The King in Yellow, Raymond Chandler
—

1945, Sleuth:
The Pink Caterpillar, Anthony Boucher
—

1953, Sleuth:
The Suicide, Ross Macdonald
—

1960, Sleuths: The 87th Precinct
The Empty Hours, Ed McBain
—

1993, Sleuth:
The Heroine, Patricia Highsmith
—
[note: don't understand why she included - only series character was Ripley - not a detective - and those were novels only! Must have been a personal quirky choice for one of the editors - they admit in Introduction that they allowed themselves one each.]

1965, Sleuth:
The Death of a Bum, Donald E. Westlake
—

1950, Sleuth:
Breathe No More, John D. MacDonald
—

1976, Sleuth:
When the Wedding was Over, Ruth Rendell
—

1977, Sleuth:
Like a Lamb to Slaughter, Lawrence Block
—

1981, Sleuths: Leaphorn and Chee
The Witch, Yazzie, and the Nine of Clubs, Tony Hillerman
—

1983, Sleuth: Nameless
Cat's-Paw, Bill Pronzini
—

1990, Sleuth:
Somewhere in the City, Marcia Muller
—


1994, Sleuth:
Old Rattler, Sharyn McCrumb
—

1979, Sleuths: Dalziel and Pascoe
Dalziel's Ghost, Reginald Hill
—

1993, Sleuth: Easy Rollins
The Watts Lions, Walter Mosley
—

1995, Sleuth:
Grace Notes, Sara Paretsky
—

[Janis]

I think this is probably the best collection of short stories I’ve ever read. Usually there’s 1 or 2 I like, but in this collection there was only 1 or 2 I didn’t like, and I’m not usually a fan of short stories.

[Alessandra]

Una raccolta di racconti gialli di diversi grandi autori. Gradevoli le scelte con qualche chicca imperdibile.

[Ed]

An excellent composite of a variety of mystery writers. Well worth the read.

[Mo]

available at Rochester Public Library Central