Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Feeling Their Way Toward a Genre

I’m a few hours late in mentioning this, but my latest Mysteries and Thrillers column was posted this morning on the Kirkus Reviews Web site. My topic this time around: Otto Penzler’s energetic new miscellany, The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

As I explain in the piece, this volume features “32 early, often excellent stabs at employing larceny, treachery and murder--and the investigation of such misdeeds--as principal catalysts for dramatic literary storytelling.” Among the authors included: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Anna Katharine Green, Richard Harding Davis, Edith Wharton, and Ambrose Bierce. Click here to read my thoughts on this collection ... which might make an ideal gift for mystery-fiction lovers this Christmas. Make a note of it.

No comments: