Murder at the automat / Cornell Woolrich. Whistler's murder / Fredric Brown -- The third bullet / John Dickson Carr -- Fingerprint ghost / Joseph Commings -- The calico dog / Mignon G. Eberhart -- The exact opposite / Erle Stanley Gardner -- The light at three o'clock / MacKinlay Kantor -- The episode of the nail and the requiem / C. Daly King -- The riddle of the yellow canary / Stuart Palmer -- The house of haunts / Ellery Queen -- Off the face of the Earth / Clayton Rawson -- His heart could break / Craig Rice -- Murder among the magicians / Manly Wade Wellman -- Murder at the automat / Cornell Woolrich.
Summary:
"Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the form. For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period's purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable crime scenes and brilliant explanations, and the puzzling and clever tales they produced in those brief decades remain unmatched to this day. Among the Americans, some of these authors are still household names, inextricably linked to the locked room mysteries they devised: John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Stuart Palmer. Others, associated with different styles of crime fiction, also produced great works--authors including Fredric Brown, MacKinlay Kantor, Craig Rice, and Cornell Woolrich. All of these and more can be found in Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, selected by Edgar Award-winning mystery expert and anthologist Otto Penzler. Featuring a delightful mix of well-known writers and unjustly-forgotten masters, the fourteen tales included herein highlight the best of the American impossible crime story, promising hours of entertainment for armchair sleuths young and old."--provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.