Inevitably, because of the enormous range covered between these covers, it mostly skims the surface of the entire genre, but it's all nicely presented.Ĭollins begins with the famous 18th-century French detective Vidocq, founder of the Sûreté and author of memoirs that are more fiction than fact, and moves quickly to the true inventor of the detective story, Edgar Allan Poe. It's not hard to tell when a writer, rather than a scholar, is doing the writing. The History Of Mystery's text, by the fine mystery writer Max Allan Collins, is a joy to read. Well, I wish I did, because this group of books includes some of the most beautiful and exciting mystery reference books ever produced. Penzler Pick, December 2001: It may start to look as if I have stock in Collectors Press because I've praised one of its books for three months in a row ( The Great American Paperback in October and Pulp Culture in November).
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