Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Detective Stories

Project GutenbergProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
369K words
Chapters
37

Tags

English Originals Mystery and Suspense Suspense ThrillerBattle of WitsMystery SolvingComplex HumanityMind BendingCriminal PsychologyDetective FictionShort Story CollectionClassic MysteryLogical Reasoning

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Masterpieces of Mystery in Four Volumes: Detective Stories by Joseph Lewis FrenchAuthor: ,Language: English, Class: PN: Language and Literatures: Literature: General, Criticism, Collections, Release Date: Dec 13, 2008

Editor's review

This is a detective fiction anthology edited by Joseph Lewis French, the detective stories volume of the four-volume Masterpieces of Mystery. Its strength lies in the collection rather than any single story: it gathers short detective tales by various authors into one book, letting readers experience the many conventions of early detective literature—locked rooms, pursuit, deduction, and surprise reversals—within a single volume. As a Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook, its value is first of all accessibility, giving readers low-cost access to the editorial taste and generic landscape of early twentieth-century English-language detective short stories. From an editorial perspective, such anthologies suit "sampling": there is no need to read straight through; start with a story whose title or length appeals to you, then look back at the editor's logic of selection. It fits fragmented reading time, travel, or as a change of pace between longer books. Note that the stories are early, and some deductive techniques no longer feel fresh to modern readers; appreciate their pioneering quality with a sense of genre history rather than judging them by contemporary suspense standards.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Skim the table of contents first and pick your first story by length or title interest; no need to start at the beginning.
  2. After each story, note the core puzzle and solution in one or two sentences for easy comparison.
  3. Read one story per session, using fragmented time such as commutes.
  4. After finishing, review the selection order and consider how the editor arranged different kinds of detective stories.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37

FAQ

Are all the stories in this anthology by the same author? No. It is a collection of detective stories edited by Joseph Lewis French, gathering short works by multiple authors as the detective volume of the four-volume Masterpieces of Mystery. Styles and techniques therefore vary, and it is better read as sampling than as a continuous book.
Do I need to read from the first story to the last in order? No. The stories are largely independent, and you can choose freely by interest or length in the contents. If you want to grasp the editor's logic, revisit the order after several stories and observe how different types are arranged; that is more rewarding than reading mechanically straight through.
Will early detective stories feel outdated? Some deductive techniques do seem less novel today, but that is precisely their value for genre history: many later conventions are already foreshadowed here. Reading with the eye of "how did the pioneers design their puzzles" reveals more pleasure than judging twist strength by contemporary suspense standards.

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About the author

Project Gutenberg Author

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