Golden Age Detective Stories (An American Mystery Classic)

Starred review from May 10, 2021
Fourteen authors previously represented by their novels in the American Mystery Classics series demonstrate their skills in shorter form in this superior anthology. Cornell Woolrich, best known for his tales of passion and despair, changes gears with the puzzler “The Mystery in Room 913.” Multiple occupants of a hotel room jump out of its ninth-floor window, leaving suicide notes behind, but the house detective is convinced something else is going on. Clayton Rawson perfects hiding a clue fairly in “From Another World,” in which his magician-sleuth, the Great Merlini, must solve a fatal stabbing in a room whose door and window were sealed with paper. In addition to well-known contributors, such as Ellery Queen and Erle Stanley Gardner, Penzler presents memorable tales from the lesser-known, such as H.F. Heard, whose reimagined Sherlock Holmes appears in “The Enchanted Garden,” and Bayard Kendrick, creator of the blind detective Capt. Duncan Maclain, who demonstrates his considerable abilities in “5 – 4 = Murderer.” This sampler is an easy gateway to other volumes in this high-quality series.

May 15, 2021
Think the English have a monopoly on the classic, fair-play detective stories that flourished between the two world wars? Think again, says this lineup of 14 all-American reprints dating from 1925 to 1955. The keynotes here are variety and consistency. There are classics like Ellery Queen's brainy "The Adventure of the African Traveler" and rediscoveries like "Postiche," by Mignon G. Eberhart, whom editor Penzler aptly describes as the Mary Higgins Clark of her day. Fans of Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason and Anthony Boucher's Sister Ursula will find the sleuths in the rare short stories "The Case of the Crimson Kiss" and "The Stripper." Pamela and Jerry North meet murder at a class reunion in Frances and Richard Lockridge's "There's Death for Remembrance," and the Great Merlini solves a locked-room murder in Clayton Rawson's "From Another World." H.F. Heard's "The Enchanted Garden" is a floridly written Sherlock-ian pastiche about the mysterious Mr. Mycroft; Chicago lawyer John J. Malone talks a suicidal woman off a ledge and solves her actress mother's apparent suicide in the pungent "Goodbye, Goodbye!" Neighbors come together to help solve the case of a poisoned dog in Charlotte Armstrong's "The Enemy"; a much wealthier dog narrowly escapes a second poisoning in Patrick Quentin's "Puzzle for Poppy." The principals in Baynard Kendrick's "5-4=Murderer" draw no closer together than you'd expect people at a truck stop to do; the family home in Mary Roberts Rinehart's "Locked Doors" might as well be a prison. In the longest story, Cornell Woolrich's house detective investigates a series of fatal leaps years apart from a single hotel window in "The Mystery in Room 913." The only serious disappointment is the absence of John Dickson Carr and Rex Stout. So much for variety. What's consistent is the quality, which is exemplary.

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June 14, 2021
Anthony Boucher, Mignon G. Eberhart, Erle Stanley Gardner, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Cornell Woolrich, Charlotte Armstrong: these are acknowledged greats of the mystery-fiction genre. How nice it is to see these writers, and other genre greats, in a single volume. Here's a Perry Mason story; a short mystery featuring Rinehart's Hilda Adams; a lovely little Sister Ursula mystery from Boucher; a classic impossible-mystery story from Woolrich. Dating from the mid-1920s to the mid-'50s, these stories are uniformly excellent even though they are written in widely varying styles. For some readers, the book will be a walk down memory lane, or a way to reconnect with writers they haven't visited in a while; for others, it's a wonderful introduction to some new writers--people who not only excelled at mystery fiction, but who also helped create and define the genre. The book belongs on the shelf of any true mystery fan, and in the collection of every library's mystery section.

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