The Oxford Book of Victorian Detective Stories

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Short, enticing tales of mystery and detection were part of the Victorian readers' staple diet. The detective story celebrated the human ability to explain and comprehend. In this entertaining anthology, Michael Cox has assembled a wide-ranging selection of 31 stories from authors such as J.S. Le Fanu, Charles Dickens, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, Wilkie Collins, M.P. Shiel, Baroness Orczy, Sax Rohmer, Robert Barr, and, inevitably, Arthur Conan Doyle. There are police detectives, gentlemen amateurs, lady detectives, professional consulting detectives, even an 'anti-detective' (who devises a crime for himself to solve) and a psychic detective. The villains against whom they pit their wits are equally various, as are their crimes - from fraud and forgery to theft, abduction, and of course, murder most foul, whether by poison, bullet, or blade.