THE OXFORD BOOK OF AMERICAN DETECTIVE STORIES

Though Hillerman's introduction notes his impatience with "the rules" of the detective story's Golden Age, this magisterial selection of 34 stories is remarkably evenhanded, proceeding from Poe to Ross Macdonald and Rex Stout with scarcely a notable omission (except for Dashiell Hammett, for copyright reasons). The emphasis here is on familiar items, though work by less well-known writers like Richard Sale and Robert Leslie Bellem provide welcome variety. The problem comes in the last hundred pages—all the room the editors leave for the past 30 years. The stories by Bill Pronzini, Edward D. Hoch, Linda Barnes, Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, and editor Hillerman are mostly exemplary; but other recent masters of the short story—like Loren D. Estleman and Ed Gorman and Lawrence Block—must wonder why they weren't included when historical curios by Anna Katherine Green and Arthur B. Reeve were. The anthology as museum, with Hillerman and Herbert as suave a pair of curators as you could wish.