The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories (Oxford Books of Prose) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192803751 ISBN 13: 9780192803757

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003

Synopsis

The detective story as we know it came into being in the 1890s with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and has never looked back. Its popularity has a good deal to do with its pungency, and with its power to intrigue and absorb the reader while abiding by the rules of the genre (however flexible these have become). Every age has produced a kind of detective fiction that exemplifies its distinctive manners and customs, from the sedate tales which began to appear in the wake of Sherlock Holmes to the debonair detection of the 1920s and after. The short tale of crime took off in many directions, with the authors such as Anthony Berkley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Carer Dickson, and Edmund Crispin bringing the utmost expertise, originality, and ingenuity to bear on the detective theme. An increasing realism is apparent from the post-war era on, though with no diminution in entertainment value. And as we come up to the present, the detective story has been adapted further to accommodate other facets of modern life.

This collection of 33 stories shows the scope, vigour, and enduring fascination of the detective story, as well as indicating its importance as a barometer of social attitudes and literary practices. It gathers together a wide range of stories, many unfamiliar, by writers including Julian Symons, Michael Gilbert, P. D. James, and Ruth Rendell, which are among the very best examples of English detective writing of the twentieth century--the cream of crime.

About this title

About the Author:

Patricia Craig was born and educated in Belfast before moving to London, where she now lives. She is a freelance critic and reviewer, and has edited several anthologies, including Oxford Books of Detective Stories, Ireland, and Modern Women's Stories.

From Publishers Weekly:

Beginning with the Conan Doyle era, this collection moves chronologically past Christie and Sayers to P. D. James and the present moment. Most of the 33 stories follow the Sherlock Holmes formula: a plethora of clues and a solution by ratiocination. No hard-boiled detectives or seedy characters can be found because, as Craig ( The Lady Investigates ) informs us in her introduction, such types never took root in the English detective story--British readers evidently prefer the urbanity of the drawing-room settings roamed by upper-class sleuths. The puzzles posed by locked rooms are thus solved in "The Oracle of the Dog" by G. K. Chesterton. Unexplained deaths are explained--delightfully--in Freeman Wills Crofts's "The Mystery of the Sleeping-Car Express." A few perpetrators get away with their crimes, as in Robert Barnard's "The Oxford Way of Death" and in Cyril Hare's "Miss Burnside's Dilemma," but most are brought to justice. The detective story, as Craig observes, is an optimistic genre; there is always, by tradition, a solution, and therein lies our pleasure. This anthology is chock-full of deductive reasoning, whimsy and that remarkable gift of the British: understatement.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0192803751
• ISBN 13: 9780192803757
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 576
• Editor: Craig Patricia