The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery

Being a mystery fan, I like to know more than just the author's name or mystery's title before I dig in. This over-sized, informative book is more than I hoped for. I recommend it to all mystery fans, new and old. Each time you glance through it, you can't help but come away with something you didn't know before about the authors, their work, the mystery genre itself and what keeps it growing. Bruce F. Murphy has left no stone unturned; he has included everyone in the mystery field, not just the old classics or most popular.I really enjoy the non-fiction books that give us inside revelation to the whodunit genre. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery is just that kind. It's more than a listing of authors and titles. Once you read the Preface explaining the triumph of the mystery story, you will enter into a book that lists mystery information in a dictionary/encyclopedia type style. You will find listings of authors, pseudonyms, titles, characters, poisons, mystery expressions, conventions, mystery awards, and more. It's great. It's an informative guide of well over 500 pages and worth every penny. If the cost is too much for your pocket book, I recommend the book clubs that are offering it a little cheaper.

Once you open it, you can't put it down. Murphy knows his stuff. Well edited.

If the mystery genre has lacked anything over the past century it's serious criticism. Aside from Jon L. Breen's reviews in Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine and Marilyn Stasio's pieces for the Times Book Review, mysteries have been virtually ignored by critics despite their permanent presence on bestseller lists. Bruce Murphy's The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery satisfies this need for insightful, intelligent commentary. Mr. Murphy provides a thorough analysis of mystery fiction from Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin to Bill Pronzini's nameless detective and even includes literary greats who have given the mystery a try-Jorge Louis Borges, William Faulkner, and Chester Himes to name a few. The mystery is also dealt with internationally through explorations of Manuel Vazquez Montalban, Paco Taibo, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Moreover, Mr. Murphy provides etymological histories of terms often encountered in the mystery novel and dispels common misconceptions readers have about the true purposes of agencies like INTERPOL. No subgenre is ignored: cozies, malice-domestics, psychological suspense, police procedurals, and the hard-boiled novel are all given equal attention. Brilliant, but forgotten crime writers like Charles Willeford, often ignored in other encyclopedias and bibliograpies, are finally given the respect they deserve. And cozy novelists Leo Bruce and Patricia Wentworth are rarely examined in the depth that they are here. Bruce Murphy's The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery is for every reader. Besides being comprehensive and informative, the book is just plain fun to read-a must for home libraries and coffee tables.

I really appreciated this book because it is far more than a mere listing of authors and titles.Applause for Bruce Murphy's, Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery! At last we mystery fans have a critical guide to the best in a genre offering an ever burgeoning selection of titles. Murphy's literary judgment is sound and his style very readable. Contains lots of fascinating mystery information not available elsewhere. Great reading.

Finally the book I had been waiting for for years! I am a great fan of mystery writing but I often found myself stuck without new good authors to explore. How to choose among the millions of titles? How to know if I will like them? The jacket often doesn't say much, and the praise bits are usually only a series of meaningless adjectives. What I wanted was a book of reviews, a critical work that would give me a clear opinion on this and that writer and would recommend his or her best books. The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery is exactly what I was looking for; for me it is the perfect mystery reader's companion. Before this encyclopedia all that was available were more or less comprehensive alphabetical lists of authors giving a short bio and maybe a rating, but nothing to make up your own mind, nothing to know what the author is really about, what his or her writing style is like, what are their preferred subjects and how they deal with them. Over the past few weeks I have read many of the pleasant short essays in the Encyclopedia and discovered several authors that I'm eager to know. I have also learned quite a few details about a number of specific novels that promise to be gripping. At least for a while, the specter of not having a mystery to read has been pushed away! I now have quite a reading list for the months to come, which also includes a mysterious writer from more than a century ago.... Thank you Mr.Murphy! Thank you for an opinionated book, there are too few of those around.I also want to add a short note in reference to a customer review I read here and which, I must confess, pushed me to write my own. It is ridiculous to say that this book is sexist. I only wish that some people who pretend to defend women would realize how much harm they do to the female part of humanity by uttering statements that present women as ridiculous fools. What is the standing of someone who reads only women authors BECAUSE they are women, and independently from the quality of their writing? Women do not only read cozy mysteries--nor do they necessarily write them! (Of course, if this reviewer had read more and different books he/she would have probably realized that. If he/she had read THIS book, instead of one by an unknown Mr.Taylor, she/he would realize it too). I am even more outraged by the reviewer's dismissal of the quality of the authors selected by Mr. Murphy: is the reviewer aware that many of them are women writers and that among them are some of the most outstanding mystery authors? What does he/she think of Margaret Millar, or Josephine Tey, or the new writer Dorothy Porter! All of them are reviewed in the Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery and justly--I think--given a great review. I am a woman and I am deeply offended by the chauvinistic undertones of that message, to the point that I wondered if it was written with the purpose of discrediting women.