The Oxford Book of Detective Stories is a thorough, broad, and representative collection of short stories intended to reflect the best of detective fiction from around the world. Drawing on works dating from the middle 1800s up to the present, editor Patricia Craig shows us how different nationalities have imposed their own stamp on this highly popular and relatively young literary genre. Alongside English and American fiction by such acknowledged masters as Ellery Queen, Dashiell Hammett, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Agatha Christie, we find stories by Georges Simenon, Arthur Conan Doyle, Sarah Paretsky, and Ian Rankin. The anthology roams across Europe and further afield to embrace Japan, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Argentina, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. This is a book that will delight any fan or student of detective fiction. Women detectives, police procedurals, the amateur sleuth, locked-room mysteries, and the classic or pioneering models of the genre are all represented here--and in her perceptive and inclusive introduction Craig examines the figure of the detective in international literature.



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, English Detective Stories, and Modern Women's Stories.