Haining, Peter

The Classic Era of Crime Fiction

London, Prion Books, 2002. 213 pp. £ 17.99.

The entire evolution of detective fiction can be summarized in three words: whodunit, howdunit and whydunit.

This may look like a coffee table book but, in fact, you keep it on your desk. Every time you dip into it, you'll go to your library, your nearest secondhand bookstore and/or those splendid internet sites from which such books can be purchased. From the hundreds of beautiful illustrations you'll want mint first editions.

There are authors and books that are household names and those even us crime buffs don't know yet, not until this volume has been examined enough times. I can't enumerate them all, so here to tempt you are the chapters: Cold-Blooded Killers & Hot Penny Bloods, The Yellow-Back Crime Fighters, Dime-a-Dozen Sleuths, The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Enter the Private Investigators, The Poets of Tabloid Murder, The Mean Streets of Crime Noir; The Spies Who Came in From the Cold.

Thumbnail sketches of the authors, the sleuths, the villains.

Don't borrow it!

Buy it!

For yourself!

Like so many authors, you may even be inspired to follow in their footsteps. You know where to ask the PR person to send a review copy.

Believe it or not, the books and colour illustrations are all based on the author's private library of thousands of volumes.