Detective Stories is a new hardcover in Knopf’s Everyman line, tidily printed and bound and at a bargain price, with a few eccentric selections that make it all the more appealing.
Obviously, up against the mantel-busting anthologies edited by Otto Penzler or Peter Haining, this comparatively trim anthology has to go for tone rather than comprehensiveness. Raymond Chandler’s great “I’ll Be Waiting” is here, as is Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” the grain of sand in the oyster that produced an entire genre, and Conan Doyle’s “Silver Blaze,” the cleverest of all the Sherlock Holmes stories.
As far as other authors go, I have no quarrel with the inclusion of Ruth Rendell or Ian Rankin, but Erle Stanley Gardner doesn’t really hold up very well, and is Sara Paretsky really the best of the currrent mystery authors?
Just asking …
In other news, the Bookfinder.com tally of the most requested out-of-print books once more names Madonna’s Sex, Walt Kelly’s I Go Pogo, and Salvador Dali’s The Jerusalem Bible, among other nonfiction desirables. Fiction’s most requested include Dennis Potter’s Ticket to Ride, Donald Hamilton’s The Big Country and Lynne Cheney’s lesbian romance Sisters.
In the Pipeline…
There’s a new translation afoot of Don Quixote that sounds interesting. Thomas Lathrop is the man doing it, and he’s been working on it for 10 years. The new edition is expected to be ready in time for the 400th anniversary of the book, originally published in 1612. Signet will publish.
Mike Browning’s Word of the Week…
scunner: an aversion; a strong dislike.
Maybe Paretsky isn’t the best–who knows what constitutes the best–but she is very good indeed