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Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers

Page history last edited by PBworks 16 years, 1 month ago

Twentieth Century Crime and Mystery Writers (Macmillan, 1980)

 

A huge (1568 page) encylopaedic work published by Macmillan in 1980. Each of six hundred authors is given a brief biography, a bibliography and a critical essay from one of the contributors. There's also a section on nineteeth-century writers, with nine of the usual suspects, and one on foreign-language writers. This is such a good book and so packed with information that it seems a shame to criticise it, but it could be so much better...

 

To start with, the bibliographies list not only crime writings but also, separately, other writings. So a dilettante like AA Milne, with one crime story, takes up three pages for his bibliography. How many more crime writers and their books could have been fitted in if these irrelevancies were omitted?

 

Secondly, the book commits the common mistake of conflating spy stories with crime writing. Working for world domination may include committing crimes, but that doesn't mean that Ian Fleming belongs alongside John Dickson Carr. Fleming and Le Carre and their ilk should have been moved into a separate section, or better still a separate book. In the same way many 'psychological thrillers' which contain little or no crime - and no detection at all - seem to have made their way in here.

 

Finally there is a preponderance of 'modern' authors. From the 1980 perspective of the book these include PD James, who started writing in 1966, and Ruth Rendell (1964), as well as many others. This is understandable on Macmillan's part, but obviously a bit of a drawback to Golden Age fans.

 

But having said all this the book still has several ordinary books'-worth of material about GAD authors and most of it is good reading. Highly recommended if you can get it for a reasonable price.

 

Jon.


Second Edition (1985)

 

A second edition from 1985 published by St Martin's Press has fewer pages (1095) but a larger format, with two columns, and is much easier to read. It covers about 650 writers. Some have been added and others removed: for instance, Kingsley Amis has gone and Grant Allen has been added. The result is to tighten the focus slightly, but many pages are still wasted listing non-criminous books and stories. There are still astonishing omissions -- George Bellairs and Cecil Freeman Gregg, for instance -- but US material seems to be fairly well covered.

 

The book also includes a Preface (unchanged from the first edition), a reading list, details of advisors and contributors, and two appendices: a very brief smattering of nineteenth-century writers, a slightly less brief listing of foreign-language writers. This is followed by a 130-page 'Index' (more correctly a 'List') of book titles in alphabetical order (and annoyingly omitting leading 'A's and 'The's), which is not present in the previous edition.

 

Because of the removed material this edition cannot fully replace the previous one, but it is worth having for the new and corrected entries.

 

Jon.

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