The Great Detectives

The World's Most Celebrated Sleuths Unmasked by Their Authors

Otto Penzler

• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN:
  9781453266403
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Écriture créative

The origins of literature's finest crime fighters, told by their creators themselves
Their names ring out like gunshots in the dark of a back alley, crime fighters of a lost era whose heroic deeds will never be forgotten. They are men like Lew Archer, Pierre Chambrun, Flash Casey, and the Shadow. They are women like Mrs. North and the immortal Nancy Drew. These are detectives, and they are some of the only true heroes the twentieth century ever knew.
In this classic volume, Otto Penzler presents essays written by the authors who created these famous characters. We learn how Ed McBain killed—and resurrected—the hero of the 87th Precinct, how international agent Quiller wrote his will, and how Dick Tracy first announced that "crime does not pay." Some of these heroes may be more famous than others, but there is not one whom you wouldn't like on your side in a courtroom, a shootout, or an old-fashioned barroom brawl.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Otto Penzler
• Roderick Alleyn by Ngaio Marsh
• John Appleby by Michael Innes
• Lew Archer by Ross Macdonald
• Father Bredder by Leonard Holton
• Flash Casey by George Harmon Coxe
• Pierre Chambrun by Hugh Pentecost
• Inspector Cockrill by Christianna Brand
• Captain José Da Silva by Robert L. Fish
• Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
• The 87th Precinct by Ed McBain
• Fred Fellows by Hillary Waugh
• Inspector Ghote by H. R. F. Keating
• Matt Helm by Donald Hamilton
• Duncan Maclain by Baynard H. Kendrick
• Mark McPherson by Vera Caspary
• Lieutenant Luis Mendoza by Dell Shannon
• Mr. and Mrs. North by Richard Lockridge
• Patrick Petrella by Michael Gilbert
• Superintendent Pibble by Peter Dickinson
• Quiller by Adam Hall
• Inspector Schmidt by George Bagby
• The Shadow by Maxwell Grant
• Michael Shayne by Brett Halliday
• Virgil Tibbs by John Ball
• Dick Tracy by Chester Gould
• Inspector Van der Valk by Nicolas Freeling
• Bibliography and Filmography
• Copyright