This unusual collection of stories explores the phenomenon of the detective story. Tracing its history from the first Sherlock Holmes stories in 1891 to the variety of detectives that appeared in the Edwardian era, this anthology offers exciting rarities by many well-known authors such as Sir Authur Conan Doyle, Richard Harding Davis, and many others.

Contents:
• A Scandal in Bohemia (1891) • Arthur Conan Doyle
• Cheating the Gallows (1893) • Israel Zangwill
• The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock (1895) • Anna Katharine Green
• The Flitterbat Lancers (1896) • Arthur Morrison
• The Florentine Dante (1898) • Fergus Hum
• Nine Points of the Law (1898) • E. W. Hornung
• In the Fog (1901) • Richard Harding Davis
• The Fire of London (1905) • Arnold Bennett
• Lord Chizelrigg’s Missing Fortune (1905) • Robert Barr
• A Retrieved Reformation (1903) • O. Henry
• The Four Just Men (1905) • Edgar Wallace
• The Mysterious Railway-Passenger (1908) • Maurice Leblanc
• The Affair of the Corridor Express (1899) • Victor L. Whitechurch
• The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
• The Hard-Boiled Egg (“Philo Gubb, The Correspondence School Detective”, 1913) • Ellis Parker Butler
• The Master of Mystery (1902) • Jack London
• “Spontaneous Combustion” (1911) • Arthur B. Reeve
• A Wastrel’s Romance (1910) • R. Austin Freeman
• The Honour of Israel Gow (“The Strange Justice”, 1911) • G. K. Chesterton
• Smothered in Corpses • Ernest Bramah
• The Angel of the Lord (“The Broken Stirrup-Leather”, 1911) • Melville Davisson Post
• His Last Bow: an Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes (1917) • Arthur Conan Doyle