Encyclopedia of Mystery and Detection

Chris Steinbrunner is an expert in TV history and feature programming. Otto Penzler is a collector of detective fiction and proprietor of a mystery bookshop. This book covers over 500 writers of detective and mystery fiction, the most complete reference work of its kind. There are alphabetical entries for writers and their more famous characters. Their novels, stories, and films are listed. Many of the authors were alive in 1976 so their listings were incomplete. [Many have heard of "Charlie Chan" but few of Earl Derr Biggers.] Mystery stories are similar to morality plays that show how justice triumphs over evil. Some might call them "escape novels" since the real world doesn't always work that way. Whether they sharpen the thinking process (`Preface') they certainly tell about events you don't find in everyday life ("outside the conventions and humdrum routines of everyday life"). Their rise in the mid 19th century follows the rise of big cities, where the solution of crimes needed specialists. There is a wide range of settings as well as detectives. The `Introduction' says their definition of mystery fiction is very broad. The authors admit their selection and length of articles is subjective, but follow practical considerations. Some of their entries are borderline, and so are their omissions. The `Selective Bibliography' lists the books they consulted. Browsing this book you will find "The Crime Doctor", a series of films from the 1940s that are long forgotten (one of the earliest films that I remember seeing). Many of the films were never shown on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, or now. The author of the first mystery novel I ever read is here (Thomas W. Hanshew). Some of these books tell about people and places you will never meet (the oil millionaires of Raymond Chandler). Others provide more practical experience ("Perry Mason and the Case of the Singing Skirt"). Most murders in the real world involve sex or lust, money or greed, and occur at home. They rarely involve obscure poisons or clever methods of murder. Raymond Chandler explained this in his essay "The Simple Art of Murder". The detective murder mystery seems to have died out in the 1950s with the rise of government agent mysteries (James Bond and others). Popular tastes or corporate choice? Sergeant Joe Friday is not Philip Marlowe. There is a listing for Professor James Moriarity, the "Napoleon of Crime". Gerald Sparrow's "Vintage Victorian Murders" mentions the barrister Sayers who ran London crime for twenty years. Most fiction has to be based on reality to be believable, that is why "truth is stranger than fiction".