Waiting for Godstow (Martin Edwards). Problem of cell 13 (Jacques Futrelle) -- Terribly strange bed (Wilkie Collins) -- Two bottles of relish (Lord Dunsany) -- Invisible man (G.K. Chesterton) -- Doomdorf mystery (Melville Davisson Post) -- Adventure of the speckled band (Arthur Conan Doyle) -- Wrong problem (John Dickson Carr) -- Thing invisible (William Hope Hodgson) -- Department of impossible crimes (James Yaffe) -- Aluminum dagger (R. Austin Freeman) -- Crewel needle (Gerald Kersh) -- Doctor's case (Stephen King) -- Knife between brothers (Manly Wade Wellman) -- Glass gravestone (Joseph Commings) -- Tea leaf (Edgar Jepson & Robert Eustace) -- Flung-back lid (Peter Godfrey) -- Crooked picture (John Lutz) -- Blind man's hood (Carter Dickson) -- Man from nowhere (Edward D. Hoch) -- Laughing butcher (Fredric Brown) -- Sands of thyme (Michael Innes) -- Flying death (Samuel Hopkins Adams) -- Flying corpse (A. E. Martin) -- Flying hat (Vincent Cornier) -- Day the children vanished (Hugh Pentecost) -- Twelfth statue (Stanley Ellin) -- All at once, no Alice (William Irish) -- Beware of the trains (Edmund Crispin) -- Locked bathroom (H. R. F. Keating) -- Mike, Alec, and Rufus (Dashiell Hammett) -- Episode of the Torment IV (C. Daly King) -- Greaves' disappearance (Julian Hawthorne) -- House of haunts (Ellery Queen) -- Monkey trick (J. E. Gurdon) -- Ordinary hairpins (E. C. Bentley) -- Phantom motor (Jacques Futrelle) -- Theft of the Bermuda penny (Edward D. Hoch) -- Room number 23 (Judson Philips) -- Burglar who smelled smoke (Lynne Wood Block & Lawrence Block) -- Kestar Diamond case (Augustus Muir) -- Odour of sanctity (Kate Ellis) -- Problem of the old oak tree (Edward D. Hoch) -- Invisible weapon (Nicholas Olde) -- Confession of Rosa Vitelli (Ray Cummings) -- Locked room to end locked rooms (Stephen Barr) -- Nothing is impossible (Clayton Rawson) -- Where have you gone, Sam Spade? (Bill Pronzini) -- In a telephone cabinet (G. D. H. Cole & M. I. Cole) -- Death out of thin air (Stuart Towne) -- Dream (Agatha Christie) -- Border-line case (Margery Allingham) -- Bradmoor murder (Melville Davisson Post) -- Man who liked toys (Leslie Charteris) -- Ashcomb Poor case (Hulbert Footner) -- Little house at Croix-Rousse (Georges Simenon) -- Bird in the hand (Erle Stanley Gardner) -- Gulverbury diamonds (David Durham) -- Fifth tube (Frederick Irving Anderson) -- Strange case of Steinkelwintz (MacKinlay Kantor) -- Arsene Lupin in prison (Maurice Leblanc) -- Mystery of the strong room (L. T. Meade & Robert Eustace) -- No way out (Dennis Lynds) -- Episode of the Codex' curse (C. Daly King) -- Poisoned dow '08 (Dorothy L. Sayers) -- Traveller's tale (Margaret Frazer) -- Death at the Excelsior (P. G. Wodehouse) -- Waiting for Godstow (Martin Edwards).
Summary:
Edgar Award{u2013}winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form {u2014} a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth {u2014} this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you'll find stories with evocative titles like "The Flying Death", "The Man From Nowhere", "A Terribly Strange Bed", and "The Theft of the Bermuda Penny", not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon's Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op, and many more.
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.