For some years, I’d heard wonderful things about The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories. I was told it was an excellent collection of short mystery fiction containing some real gems of the genre, including Ronald Knox’s “Solved By Inspection.” So when I saw it in a used bookstore, you can bet I scooped it right up. But was it worth the hype?
Patricia Craig is the editor and a well-known “freelance critic and reviewer,” and she brings a lot of knowledge of the genre to this anthology. While I disagree with some of her introductory essay (dismissive of Agatha Christie!), she does a fine job of summing up the different works and where they fit into the genre. There are classic whodunits, comic crime stories, straight crime stories, and everything else. Because there are so many stories, and some of them really didn’t appeal to me, the reviews will be a bit rapid-fire. But I will say that, overall, this is a solid collection. Strict traditionalists won’t like every story here, but I’d say that any fan of detective stories will find this book worth their time.
Note that I’ve already reviewed Freeman Wills Crofts’s “The Mystery of the Sleeping-Car Express” here and Agatha Christie’s “The Witness for the Prosecution” here.
