GOLDEN AGE WHODUNITS

Think British writers had a monopoly on the formal detective story between the wars? Penzler presents evidence that may change your mind.

The single most appealing feature of this collection of 15 stories first published by American writers between 1925 and 1949 is, in fact, their varied sources. Ellery Queen is here, of course, with “Man Bites Dog,” whose mystery and solution unfold in the stands during the 1939 World Series, and so are other genre stalwarts like Mary Roberts Rinehart, Melville Davisson Post, C. Daly King, Mignon G. Eberhart, Anthony Boucher, Helen Reilly (her only short story), and Vincent Starrett, whose novella Too Many Sleuths includes enough twists and detectives for a full-length novel. But it’s revelatory to see the material supplied by Stephen Vincent Benet, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ring Lardner—even if, as Penzler notes, “it takes a while before the reader recognizes that [Lardner’s often-anthologized “Haircut”] is a crime story,” and nobody would call it a whodunit. The best stories here are among the shortest—“Haircut,” along with Stuart Palmer’s “Fingerprints Don’t Lie,” in which Hildegarde Withers stars in a tale that manages to be both lighthearted and ingenious, and Clayton Rawson’s “The Clue of the Tattooed Man,” in which the Great Merlini, basing his deductions entirely on Inspector Gavigan’s description of a murder, solves the mystery so quickly it’s over almost before it’s begun. The most original entry is Fredric Brown’s futuristic “Crisis, 1999,” even though its title date has passed and it’s not a whodunit either. And psychologist Henry Poggioli, who investigates the murder of a Trinidad servant’s bride in “A Passage to Benares,” provides the perfect punchline for the whole volume.

Guaranteed to make Americans prouder of their country than any episode in its recent political history.