Download or read book Obelists at Sea An American Mystery Classic written by C. Daly King and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C. Daly King’s debut mystery is a tale of murder, travel, and psychiatry set aboard a luxury transatlantic liner The smoking room on a transatlantic cruise ship is bound to be a hotbed of activity — but it’s less common for it to be the site of a murder. Yet, when the lights flicker aboard the luxury Meganaut, making its way from New York to Paris, this is precisely what happens; in the darkness, a gunshot rings out, and when the light is restored, a man is found dead. The situation becomes all the more curious when it’s discovered that the deceased had apparently ingested cyanide just seconds before being penetrated by the bullet. Luckily, for the other passengers, there are two detectives aboard the Meganaut, ready to leap into action. There are also four psychiatrists, and those psychiatrists convince the captain to let them take a stab at solving the crime, using their professional understanding of the human psyche to determine who could have been capable of such a crime — and why. But will they be able to deduce the puzzle’s solution before the killer strikes again? The first of seven novels by psychologist C. Daly King, Obelists at Sea is intelligent and enjoyable Golden Age mystery fare, featuring an atmospheric setting, carefully placed clues, and a complex whodunnit plot explained with sharp-witted ratiocination.

Download or read book The Birthday Murder An American Mystery Classic written by Lange Lewis and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When her husband is murdered using a method from one of her books, a screenwriter becomes the main suspect A successful writer and a B-movie director seem like the perfect match in the Hollywood Hills and, with him working to produce her novel for an upcoming film, the pair’s recent marriage isn’t the only way that they’re connected. When the husband is found murdered on the wife’s birthday using a method of poisoning that was described in one of her books, Victoria suddenly becomes the main suspect as her new happy life comes crashing down around her. The case appears straightforward from the outside but the LAPD investigator on the scene finds the truth to be anything but. Though all the signs point to Victoria, there’s no motive to be found. Now, to solve the mystery of whodunnit, he’ll have to dig beneath the veneer of the household and reveal its inner workings, and to understand the deadly drama that unfolded just beneath the surface. Reprinted for the first time in over half a century, The Birthday Murder is a beautifully written and psychologically astute Golden Age mystery set in old Los Angeles. It will appeal to fans of vintage whodunnits and of standout domestic suspense authors from the era such as Dorothy B. Hughes, Charlotte Armstrong, and Margaret Millar.

Download or read book Rim of the Pit An American Mystery Classic written by Hake Talbot and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2023-10-03 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cult classic mystery that John Dickson Carr hailed as “a marvel of ingenuity.” “I came here to make a dead man change his mind.” So begins a creepy and unusual mystery celebrated to this day as one of the greatest “impossible crime” novels of all time. When a family’s promise to protect the beloved pine grove of their dead father creates a financial strain, a seance is suggested to summon the ghost of the late logger and ask its permission. A mixed group of skeptics and believers convene at a snow-bound lodge to call the spirit with a group that includes a gambler, a businessman, a clairvoyant, a professor, and a refugee, among others. With so many diverse interests at the table, the tensions run high — but when one of the participants ends up dead, there is reason to suspect that a nefarious spirit is to blame. The body is discovered in a locked room, impenetrable from the outside — just one of many bizarre and inexplicable circumstances surrounding the scene of the crime. There is also the trail of footprints in the snow, beginning and ending amid a field of untouched powder; another on the roof, with the tracks leading for a short distance before vanishing into nothingness; and, there are fingerprints on a gun suspended at an unreachable height… Supernatural undertones and eerie atmosphere clear away in the third act to present a logical conclusion to the case, teasing out the clues and murder methods that unscrupulous readers may have missed. With its off-beat exposition, puzzling plot and exceptional prose, Rim of the Pit is a cult classic of the Golden Age era deserving of a wide audience today.

Download or read book Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries An American Mystery Classic written by Otto Penzler and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2022-07-19 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the form For 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 including Fredric Brown, MacKinlay Kantor, Craig Rice, and Cornell Woolrich. All of these and more can be found in Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, selected by Edgar Award-winning mystery expert and anthologist Otto Penzler. Featuring a delightful mix of well-known writers and unjustly-forgotten masters, the fourteen tales included herein highlight the best of the American impossible crime story, promising hours of entertainment for armchair sleuths young and old.

Download or read book Golden Age Bibliomysteries An American Mystery Classic written by Otto Penzler and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In these classic mystery tales, literature is a matter of life or death Of crime fiction’s many sub-genres, none is so reflexive and so intriguing as the “bibliomystery”: stories that involve crimes set, somehow, in the world of books. In Vincent Starrett’s “A Volume of Poe,” a bookseller is murdered; in Ellery Queen’s “The Adventure of the Three R’s,” the detective tracks the disappearance of a local Missouri author; and a killer stalks the stacks of the New York Public Library in Robert L. Blochman’s “Death Walks in Marble Halls.” With fourteen tales of bibliophilic transgression from the Golden Age of the mystery genre (the decades between the two World Wars), this volume collects stories guaranteed to entertain, featuring work from well-remembered authors such as Cornell Woolrich and Anthony Boucher and from those that are lesser-known today, such as Carolyn Wells and James Gould Cozzens. Edgar Award-winning anthologist, editor, bookseller, and mystery scholar Otto Penzler has focused extensively on the history of the bibliomystery, and his expertise shines in this enjoyable collection—both in the selection of stories, and in the informative and illuminating introductions that accompany each one.

Download or read book Obelists at Sea written by Martin Edwards and published by American Mystery Classics. This book was released on 2023-05-02 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: C. Daly King's debut mystery is a tale of murder, travel, and psychiatry set aboard a luxury transatlantic liner

Download or read book The Bellamy Trial written by Frances Noyes Hart and published by . This book was released on 1927 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Problem of the Wire Cage A Gideon Fell Mystery An American Mystery Classic written by John Dickson Carr and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2024-01-02 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Death and tennis meet in one of impossible crime master John Dickson Carr’s most memorable cases. John Dickson Carr is famous for his puzzling “impossible crime” plots in which corpses are discovered in scenarios that seem to lack any logical explanation. Among all of Carr’s ingenious crime scenes, the present case is one of the best known: a dead man is found strangled in the middle of a clay tennis court just after a storm. In the damp dirt, there is one set of footsteps—his own—leading back to the grass; the court is otherwise untouched. It seems like a case of sudden death but, in order to find who’s at fault, the authorities must first solve the mystery of the body’s puzzling position. The bafflement has reached a harried volley by the time ace amateur sleuth Dr. Gideon Fell gets involved, bringing to the case a wit capable of cutting through the racket and discovering the truth. With brilliant deductive reasoning and plenty of humor, Fell untethers a confounding set of clues in search of a diabolical killer and a bizarre murder method, serving up a dazzling stroke of genius to expose whodunit. Reissued for the first time this century, The Problem of the Wire Cage is an atmospheric and amusing Golden Age mystery with a memorable puzzle at its center, perfect for both long-time fans and first-time readers of John Dickson Carr.

Download or read book The Case of the Rolling Bones A Perry Mason Mystery An American Mystery Classic written by Erle Stanley Gardner and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perry Mason investigates a case of blackmail with a side of loaded dice Years ago, Alden Leeds struck it rich when he discovered a vein of gold. Now, aging and single, he finds himself surrounded by family waiting patiently to inherit his fortune. When he announces his engagement to a much younger woman, it sends that family into a panic, fearing that it might threaten their future gains. They have him admitted into a sanitarium, claiming incompetence—and that’s when lawyering super-sleuth Perry Mason gets involved, but the case is about to get much more complicated… Before all is said and done, Mason will tangle with a cheating gambler, a blackmailer, multiple aliases, multiple corpses, and enough red herrings to lead even the most astute reader astray. It will push the attorney’s deductive powers to their very limits before all is revealed, finally, in his masterful courtroom cross-examination. A fast-paced yarn with a delightfully convoluted plot, The Case of the Rolling Bones is among the best of the long-running Perry Mason novels, which would go on to inspire multiple television series as well as adaptations for radio and film. The book exemplifies the masterful page-turning action for which its prolific author is remembered today.

Download or read book Obelists Fly High written by C. Daly King and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2015-03-18 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a mystery that ranks with the best of Ellery Queen and Agatha Christie, shots are fired at a policeman aboard an aircraft on which a murder has already occurred. Will the officer survive, and will anyone emerge from the now-plummeting plane? With its intricate plot and "locked room" scenario, this masterpiece of detective fiction was hailed by The New York Times as "a very thrilling story."

Download or read book Your Turn Mr Moto written by John P. Marquand and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-08-18 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrilling 1st installment in Pulitzer Prize–winning author John P. Marquand’s classic espionage series featuring Imperial Japan’s most skillful spy Capitalizing on his heroic career as a World War I flying ace, Casey Lee agrees to pilot a plane across the Pacific as a publicity stunt for an American tobacco company. But his future as a goodwill ambassador between East and West takes a nosedive when the flight is abruptly canceled. Stranded in Tokyo, his bank account rapidly dwindling, Casey is approached by Mr. Moto, a secret agent with a job to offer. The work entails a matter of grave international importance—and it pays well. Casey accepts the proposition and boards a steamship bound for Shanghai, where his mission will begin. His fellow passengers include Mr. Moto and Sonya, a beautiful exile from White Russia with her own private agenda. When a Chinese man turns up dead in Casey’s stateroom, the trio is caught up in a dangerous game of intrigue and deceit, the outcome of which might just determine the fate of their nations. First serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, John P. Marquand’s popular and acclaimed Mr. Moto Novels were the inspiration for 8 films starring Peter Lorre.

Download or read book The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players An Asey Mayo Mystery An American Mystery Classic written by Phoebe Atwood Taylor and published by Penzler Publishers. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asey Mayo, the “Codfish Sherlock Holmes,” investigates the murder of a traveling performer. When the Cape Cod Players roll into towns along the lower Cape, the locals expect a great show, replete with games, magic, and merriment. Of course, they usually have an audience, too. When Boston widow Victoria Ballard, visiting the Cape to recover from a near-fatal bout with pneumonia, comes upon the troupe near her rural convalescent home, she ascertains that someone has played a nasty trick on the players, sending them to a remote destination in the wild backcountry in search of a paying gig. Sympathetic to the plight of the ragtag group, Vic invites them to stay the night with her, but when day breaks to find the lead magician with a bullet in his head, she realizes the cruel trick that brought the travelers to her home may have been part of a deadly plot—and that she may have been an unwitting participant. Enter Asey Mayo, Cape Cod’s answer to Sherlock Holmes. Armed only with folksy wisdom, Cape Cod dictums, and plenty of common sense, the jack-of-all-trades is quick to tackle the puzzling case of the murdered performer. But in order to solve the case, he’ll have to confront a curious assortment of clues and suspects odder than any he’s encountered in his long career. An amusing and atmospheric mystery set in early 1930s Cape Cod—a region still struggling to reemerge from the Great Depression and at the same time carefully guarding itself against the burgeoning tourism industry—The Mystery of the Cape Cod Players is a delightful Golden Age whodunnit that glimmers with period detail. Anyone interested in classics of the era, or in Cape Cod history in general, will find plenty to enjoy herein.

Download or read book The Red Right Hand written by Joel Townsley Rogers and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deranged killer sends a doctor on a quest for the truth - deep into the recesses of his own mind. 'Deserves its reputation as one of the greatest mysteries of all time' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, starred review What really happened to Inis St. Erme? What was his fatal mistake? Was it when he and his bride-to-be first set out to elope in Vermont? Or did his deadly error occur later, when they picked up a terrifying hitch-hiker, or when the three stopped at 'Dead Bridegroom's Pond' for a picnic? Dr Riddle is determined to find out, but he soon uncovers a series of bizarre coincidences that leave him questioning his sanity and his innocence. After all, he too walked those wild, deserted roads the night of the murder, stranded and struggling to get home to New York City. The more he reflects, the more his own memories become increasingly uncertain, as he veers into the irrational territory of pure terror...

Download or read book The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books written by Martin Edwards and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is an exemplary reference book sure to lead readers to gems of mystery and detective fiction.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review This book tells the story of crime fiction published during the first half of the twentieth century. The diversity of this much-loved genre is breathtaking, and so much greater than many critics have suggested. To illustrate this, the leading expert on classic crime discusses one hundred books ranging from The Hound of the Baskervilles to Strangers on a Train which highlight the entertaining plots, the literary achievements, and the social significance of vintage crime fiction. This book serves as a companion to the acclaimed British Library Crime Classics series but it tells a very diverse story. It presents the development of crime fiction—from Sherlock Holmes to the end of the golden age—in an accessible, informative and engaging style. Readers who enjoy classic crime will make fascinating discoveries and learn about forgotten gems as well as bestselling authors. Even the most widely read connoisseurs will find books (and trivia) with which they are unfamiliar—as well as unexpected choices to debate. Classic crime is a richly varied and deeply pleasurable genre that is enjoying a world-wide renaissance as dozens of neglected novels and stories are resurrected for modern readers to enjoy. The overriding aim of this book is to provide a launch point that enables readers to embark on their own voyages of discovery.

Download or read book Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries written by Otto Penzler and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen impossible crimes from the American masters of the form For 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 including Fredric Brown, MacKinlay Kantor, Craig Rice, and Cornell Woolrich. All of these and more can be found in Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, selected by Edgar Award-winning mystery expert and anthologist Otto Penzler. Featuring a delightful mix of well-known writers and unjustly-forgotten masters, the fourteen tales included herein highlight the best of the American impossible crime story, promising hours of entertainment for armchair sleuths young and old.

Download or read book Dread Journey written by Dorothy B. Hughes and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-06-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A starlet on a transcontinental train fears her director may be trying to kill her in this novel by Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Dorothy B. Hughes. Four years after she arrived in Los Angeles, Kitten Agnew has become a star. Though beautiful and talented, she’d be nowhere without Vivien Spender: Hollywood’s most acclaimed director—and its most dangerous. But Kitten knew what she was getting into when she got involved with him; she had heard the stories of Viv’s past discoveries: Once he discarded them, they ended up in a chorus line, a sanatorium, or worse. She knows enough of his secrets that he wouldn’t dare destroy her career. But he may be willing to kill her. On a train from Los Angeles to Chicago, Kitten learns that Viv is planning to offer her roommate a part that was meant for her. If she lets him betray her, her career will be over. But fight for the part, and she will be fighting for her life as well.

Download or read book Clues from the Couch written by Laird R. Blackwell and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2022-06-07 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The detective story--the classic whodunit with its time-displacement structure of crime--according to most literary historians, is of relatively recent origin. Early in its development, the whodunit was harshly criticized for its tightly formula-bound structure. Many critics prematurely proclaimed "the death of the whodunit" and even of detective fiction altogether. Yet today, the genre is alive, as contemporary authors have brought it into modern times through a significant integration of elaborate character development and psychology. With the modern psychological detective story emerging from the historical cauldron of detective fiction and early psychology, the genre continues to develop a complexity that reflects and guides the literary sophistication needed. This book, the first of its kind, analyzes over 150 whodunit novels and short stories across the decades, from The Moonstone to the contemporary novels that saved the genre from an ignominious death.