The Poisoned Pen
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Genre readers who enjoy early detective and mystery fiction
- Readers who want to understand early-twentieth-century American popular literature
- Intermediate and advanced learners who need light reading material in original English
- Enthusiasts interested in the evolution of the scientific detective theme
Not a good fit for
- Readers not yet comfortable with English who rely on Chinese translations
- Readers who expect modern psychological suspense and complex characterization
- Readers who need scholarly annotation and author research materials
Reading tips
- Read it as a collection of detective stories to be taken in sequence, one or two chapters at a time, to keep up the pleasure of deduction.
- Watch for the scientific methods used and their period context; comparing them with contemporary forensic fiction is especially rewarding.
- English learners can read each chapter's opening and dialogue first to sort out the relationships among the case's characters, then return to the descriptive passages.
- If you are interested in the author or the history of detective fiction, extend your reading with concise material on the development of American popular literature.
About the publisher
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
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FAQ
Is this a complete novel or a collection of stories?
Can I read this original book with average English?
Is this book suitable as an introduction to the history of detective fiction?
Comments
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About the author
Arthur B. Reeve (1880–1936) was an American detective fiction writer best known for creating the scientific detective Craig Kennedy. Sixteen of his works are included in the collection, among them The Silent Bullet, The Dream Doctor, The Social Gangster, The Poisoned Pen, The War Terror, The Treasure-Train, and Guy Garrick. His stories often bring the emerging science and technology of the day into the process of solving crimes, combining laboratory methods and forensic examination with detective reasoning to form a distinctive "scientific detective" style. The plots are tightly paced and generally center on criminal investigation and the analysis of evidence, blending suspense with the readability of popular fiction. Reeve's work helped popularize the theme of scientific detection in early twentieth-century popular literature and had a certain influence on later detective fiction that depicts crime-solving through science. Public information is limited, and the details of his life are difficult to verify, but the works mentioned above sufficiently reflect his creative direction and contribution.
