**The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman’s study, an elevator car—nowhere is a crime completely impossible. **Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form—a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth—this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you’ll find stories with evocative titles like “The Flying Death”, “The Man From Nowhere”, “A Terribly Strange Bed”, and “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny”, not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, and many more. Featuring   • Unconventional means of murder    • Pilfered jewels    • Shocking solutions Includes   • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and            the first locked-room mystery    • Masters of the short story form: Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and       Stanley Ellin A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINALcontentsIntroduction by Otto Penzler(The most popular and frequently reprinted impossible-crime stories of all time.)THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE Edgar Allan PoeTHE PROBLEM OF CELL 13 Jacques FutrelleA TERRIBLY STRANGE BED Wilkie CollinsTHE TWO BOTTLES OF RELISH Lord DunsanyTHE INVISIBLE MAN G. K. ChestertonTHE DOOMDORF MYSTERY Melville Davisson PostTHE ADVENTURE OF THE SPECKLED BAND Arthur Conan Doyle(Stabbing in a completely sealed environment appears to be the most common murder method.)THE WRONG PROBLEM John Dickson CarrTHE THING INVISIBLE William Hope HodgsonDEPARTMENT OF IMPOSSIBLE CRIMES James YaffeTHE ALUMINIUM DAGGER R. Austin FreemanTHE CREWEL NEEDLE Gerald KershTHE DOCTOR’S CASE Stephen KingA KNIFE BETWEEN BROTHERS Manly Wade WellmanTHE GLASS GRAVESTONE Joseph CommingsTHE TEA LEAF Edgar Jepson & Robert EustaceTHE FLUNG-BACK LID Peter GodfreyTHE CROOKED PICTURE John LutzBLIND MAN’S HOOD Carter Dickson(Is there a more baffling scenario than to find a body in smooth sand or snow with no footprints leading to or from the victim?)THE MAN FROM NOWHERE Edward D. HochTHE LAUGHING BUTCHER Fredric BrownTHE SANDS OF THYME Michael InnesTHE FLYING DEATH Samuel Hopkins AdamsTHE FLYING CORPSE A. E. MartinTHE FLYING HAT Vincent Cornier(It is a fantasy for many people to disappear from their present lives. Some people disappear because they want to; others disappear because someone else wants them to. And objects—large objects—sometimes disappear in the same manner.)THE DAY THE CHILDREN VANISHED Hugh PentecostTHE TWELFTH STATUE Stanley EllinALL AT ONCE, NO ALICE William IrishBEWARE OF THE TRAINS Edmund CrispinTHE LOCKED BATHROOM H. R. F. KeatingMIKE, ALEC, AND RUFUS Dashiell HammettTHE EPISODE OF THE TORMENT IV C. Daly KingGREAVES’ DISAPPEARANCE Julian HawthorneTHE HOUSE OF HAUNTS Ellery QueenTHE MONKEY TRICK J. E. GurdonTHE ORDINARY HAIRPINS E. C. BentleyTHE PHANTOM MOTOR Jacques FutrelleTHE THEFT OF THE BERMUDA PENNY Edward D. HochROOM NUMBER 23 Judson Philips(There are so many ways for the creative killer to accomplish the act.)THE BURGLAR WHO SMELLED SMOKE Lynne Wood Block & Lawrence BlockTHE KESTAR DIAMOND CASE Augustus MuirTHE ODOUR OF SANCTITY Kate EllisTHE PROBLEM OF THE OLD OAK TREE Edward D. HochTHE INVISIBLE WEAPON Nicholas OldeTHE CONFESSION OF ROSA VITELLI Ray CummingsTHE LOCKED ROOM TO END LOCKED ROOMS Stephen Barr(It may not be terribly original, but shooting someone tends to be pretty effective.)NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE Clayton RawsonWHERE HAVE YOU GONE, SAM SPADE? Bill PronziniIN A TELEPHONE CABINET G. D. H. Cole & M. I. ColeDEATH OUT OF THIN AIR Stuart TowneTHE DREAM Agatha ChristieTHE BORDER-LINE CASE Margery AllinghamTHE BRADMOOR MURDER Melville Davisson PostTHE MAN WHO LIKED TOYS Leslie CharterisTHE ASHCOMB POOR CASE Hulbert FootnerTHE LITTLE HOUSE AT CROIX-ROUSSE Georges Simenon(How does a thief remove valuables from a closely guarded room? It seems impossible, but …)THE BIRD IN THE HAND Erle Stanley GardnerTHE GULVERBURY DIAMONDS David DurhamTHE FIFTH TUBE Frederick Irving AndersonTHE STRANGE CASE OF STEINKELWINTZ MacKinlay KantorARSÈNE LUPIN IN PRISON Maurice LeblancTHE MYSTERY OF THE STRONG ROOM L. T. Meade & Robert EustaceNO WAY OUT Dennis LyndsTHE EPISODE OF THE CODEX’ CURSE C. Daly King(Often described as a woman’s murder weapon, poison doesn’t really care who administers it.)THE POISONED DOW ’08 Dorothy L. SayersA TRAVELLER’S TALE Margaret FrazerDEATH AT THE EXCELSIOR P. G. Wodehouse(Some stories simply can’t be categorized.)WAITING FOR GODSTOW Martin EdwardsAbout the AuthorOtto Penzler is a two-time winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award and the editor of numerous anthologies, among them eight other Vintage Crime/Black Lizard anthologies, most recently The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. He is the owner of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.

Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the formFor devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period's purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable crime scenes and brilliant explanations, and the puzzling and clever tales they produced in those brief decades remain unmatched to this day.Among the Americans, some of these authors are still household names, inextricably linked to the locked room mysteries they devised: John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Stuart Palmer. Others, associated with different styles of crime fiction, also produced great works—authors...

Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the formFor devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period's purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues, and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable crime scenes and brilliant explanations, and the puzzling and clever tales they produced in those brief decades remain unmatched to this day.Among the Americans, some of these authors are still household names, inextricably linked to the locked room mysteries they devised: John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Stuart Palmer. CONTENTSINTRODUCTIONANTHONY BOUCHERElsewhenFREDRIC BROWNWhistler’s MurderJOHN DICKSON CARRThe Third BulletJOSEPH COMMINGSFingerprint GhostMIGNON G. EBERHARTThe Calico DogERLE STANLEY GARDNERThe Exact OppositeMACKINLAY KANTORThe Light at Three O’ClockC. DALY KINGThe Episode of the Nail and the RequiemSTUART PALMERThe Riddle of the Yellow CanaryELLERY QUEENThe House of HauntsCLAYTON RAWSONOff the Face of the EarthCRAIG RICEHis Heart Could BreakMANLY WADE WELLMANMurder Among MagiciansCORNELL WOOLRICHMurder at the Automat

Amazon.com ReviewPenzler Pick, February 2001: The very thing that first hooked me on mysteries long ago is the element most on display in this fat and satisfying volume: amazement. Not whodunit or why, but how. And that really means wow, as in, "Wow, I can't believe what I just read!" Such cases were originally the province of Edgar Allan Poe's Inspector Dupin, whose unraveling of such sensational "impossible" crimes as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" gave the reading public of an earlier era its appetite for gasp-inducing solutions. Just a few decades later the mystery genre had progressed to a more rational approach, with which Arthur Conan Doyle equipped Sherlock Holmes, though the crimes demanding our greatest sleuth's attention were highly fanciful more often than not. Snakes in airshafts menacing gentlewomen! Clubs restricted to redheaded fellows! Wow!Next appeared the exceedingly baroque whimsies of John Dickson Carr, who eventually grew to feel the strain of being regarded as the Houdini of mystery literature. But before he saw his powers of invention begin to flag, Carr, who also wrote as Carter Dickson, had defined the subgenre of locked-room crime for all time, producing over 50 novels and dozens of short stories featuring some startling variations on the theme. The Hollow Man, published in the U.S. as The Three Coffins, is considered by experts to be this author's greatest achievement. It offers in the course of the story a seminal lecture about the locked-room crime.In this bargain tome, Carr is represented by "The Silver Curtain," in which a man standing alone in a cul-de-sac is fatally stabbed in the back. From a less well-known writer, Clayton Rawson (a real-life magician as well as an authorial one), comes a tale written in response to a challenge by Carr, his friend and rival: make a man vanish from a phone booth. (He succeeds, of course.) Also on hand are four clever contemporary tricksters: Peter Lovesey, H.R.F. Keating, Lawrence Block, and Edward D. Hoch. There's almost too much entertainment value in these 29 tales assembled by veteran editor and mystery scholar Mike Ashley. "I've endeavored to bring together a collection of stories," he says, "that seem utterly baffling and where the solution is equally amazing." That's OK. Ration them, and you'll only savor them more. --Otto PenzlerProduct DescriptionA new collection of baffling crime tales to challenge the armchair detective. With twenty-nine tales of impossible crime, this new anthology from veteran mystery editor Mike Ashley follows in the tradition of his top-selling The Mammoth Book of Historical Detectives and The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures. It includes perplexing tales, many of them in print for the first time, by such masters of mystification as Michael Collins, H. R. F. Keating, Peter Lovesey, Kate Ellis, Susanna Gregory, Bill Pronzini, and Lawrence Block.

The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many moreTHE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman's study, an elevator car--nowhere is a crime completely impossible.Edgar Award--winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form--a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth--this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you'll find stories with evocative titles like "The Flying Death", "The Man From...