[.ca] The Oxford Book of Detective Stories (ISBN 0192803719)

THE USUAL SUSPECTS (AUTHORS) AND THEN SOME:
. According to the editor, and born out by these stories, one of the things that distinguishes the English detective story from its American counterpart, is that it is almost always about "detecting" as in analyzing clues in the Sherlock Holmes manner and solving crimes mostly as a result of inductive reasoning, while American detective stories are often about the tough guy Raymond Chandler or Robert B. Parker type of detective, who gives and receives beatings and often strongarms confessions out of the frequently violent criminals. Another thing I noticed in most of the stories from England was the fact that, where there was a murder, it usually took place "off stage" or had happened before the story opened. In the American version we frequently see the grisly doings as they happen. I was familiar with some of these authors, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ruth Rendell, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, and Dorothy Sayers to name a few. I was also introduced to a number of authors I had never read, even though their stories spanned a period from before my birth to fairly modern times. To pick just one story to discuss, I settled on Ngaio Marsh's "Death on the Air" in which a "wireless" buff was electrocuted while tuning his very early model radio. This in a period where you had to manipulate two dials at the same time to bring in a signal. The electrocution was supposed to look accidental, but . . . . Our detective and his police aids bring the case to its conclusion by detective work that seems very crude compared to our modern methods, which is coupled with some very insightful questioning of family members and friends of the deceased. Their methods prove every bit as effective as our modern ones which include DNA Testing, Computer analysis, etc. There was actually more pure intellect involved in many of the older stories that there is in many modern mysteries. You might not like all the stories included in this book, but there are enough very good, very insightful tales to interest almost any mystery buff.