Detective, Crime, and Murder Mystery Books
Reading Room
Here in the Reading Room you will find
free Detective, Crime, and Murder Mystery stories.
Some are prototypes (such as the stories about Daniel from the Apocrypha).
Others are other detectives from the great age of Detective Stories (including
Father Brown, Sherlock Holmes, The Old Man in the Corner, The Thinking Machine,
Max Carrados, and others). You may already be familiar with some of them, but I
hope to introduce you to some that may well be new to you.
So get a nice hot cuppa (translation: get a
cup of hot tea!), come and sit near the glowing embers of the fireplace (or the
glowing computer screen!), and enjoy yourself!
Stories:
The story from the Bible's Apocrypha
features Daniel as a prototype of the classic detective. Compare this story with
the Sherlock Holmes story "The Golden Pince-Nez."
Another story from the Bible's Apocrypha that
features Daniel. Daniel's approach to interviewing suspects is standard today,
as seen in Meyer Levin's novel Compulsion (also made into a film starring
Orson Welles and Dean Stockwell). The French film Z also shows the
influence of this approach.
Zadig was created by Voltaire, the French
philosopher whom Ellery Queen called "The Great-Grandfather of the Detective
Story." Here is a discourse by Thomas Henry Huxley which undoubtedly comes
nearer Voltaire's account than does my paraphrase on the Home page.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
by Edgar Allan Poe
Detective: The Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin
Edgar Allan Poe's detective Dupin started it
all! And this is the story that started it all -- the very first
detective story! This is the template that Arthur Conan Doyle followed when
he created Sherlock Holmes. It introduces the amateur, eccentric
detective. It's a locked room mystery and has so many elements that have become
standard that I don't want to spoil it for you by telling you. So read it and
enjoy!
The Problem of Cell 13
by Jacques Futrelle
Detective: "The Thinking Machine," Professor S. F. X. Van Dusen
The Thinking Machine, Professor S. F. X. Van
Dusen, is dedicated to the "blunt proposition" that two and two make four, not
some of the time, but all of the time. (Except in rare cases where
they may equal three or five, that is.) In this, one of the most
anthologized stories of all time, The Thinking Machine is challenged to escape
from a maximum security prison cell by thinking his way out of it.
The Ides of March
by E. W. Hornung
From The Amateur Cracksman
Detective (Correction! Make that "Gentleman Crook."):
A. J. Raffles
"Detection in reverse." Arthur Conan Doyle's
brother-in-law created Raffles, to Doyle's chagrin. The reading public were
uncomfortable with a criminal as a protagonist and implored Hornung to reform
Raffles, but it was years before he did so. In spite of this, some
Sherlockians point out that Doyle may well have been influenced by the stories,
for it was only after Raffles that Holmes and Watson committed criminal trespass
on the estate of Charles Augustus Milverton.
The Blue Cross
by G. K. Chesterton
From The Innocence of Father Brown
Detective: Father Brown
The first Father Brown detective story.
Ellery Queen called Father Brown one of the three immortal detectives in
fiction. (For Queen, the other two are Sherlock Holmes and Dupin.)
The Invisible Man
by G. K. Chesterton
From The Innocence of Father Brown
Detective: Father Brown
Father Brown solves the case of a victim who
is murdered while under the watchful eye of police, who surround his house
in an effort to protect him. How did the murderer get past the police? And how
is it that no one saw him? (Note: Nigel Bruce, as Dr. Watson, mentioned
this story in the film The Scarlet Claw, which starred Basil Rathbone as
Sherlock Holmes.)
The Coin of Dionysius
by Ernest Bramah
From Max Carrados
Detective: Max Carrados
A rare coin may be counterfeit. The man in
possession of the coin must know whether it is real or lose an important
transaction. The matter is urgent, for if the coin is not proven authentic
immediately, its owner will lose out -- he cannot wait even a day to seek an
expert opinion. Only Max Carrados, fiction's first blind detective, can see what
others don't.
The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
From The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Detective: Sherlock Holmes
Compare Holmes's investigative technique with
that of Daniel in "Bel and the Dragon."
The Race of Orven
by M. P. Shiel
From Prince Zaleski
Detective: Prince Zaleski
Ellery Queen wrote about Prince Zaleski in
favorable terms. But, though I long pursued seeking them out, it was only
recently that I came across them. Here's the first.
The Millionaire in the Dock
by Baroness Orczy
From The Old Man in the Corner
Detective: The Old Man in the Corner
Journalist Polly Burton would visit the old
man who sat in the corner of a tea shop to seek his wisdom on certain crimes
that were in the news. He would sit in the corner, raveling and unraveling bits
of string, and often would explain to her why the police were wrong and what the
correct solution to the mystery was. A good early example of the armchair
detective by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
The Doomdorf Mystery
by Melville Davisson Post
From Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries
Detective: Uncle Abner
If you have not yet met Uncle Abner, you're
in for a treat.
The Man with the Watches
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
From Round the Fire Stories
Detective: A "well known criminal investigator" who many Sherlockians believe is
Sherlock Holmes
It's time to share with you a story that
falls into the realm of "Sherlock Holmes Apocrypha." This story that is
not part of the Sherlock Holmes canon (the fifty-six short stories and
four novels that specifically identify Sherlock Holmes as the detective).
The Lenton Croft Robberies
by Sir Arthur Morrison
From Martin Hewitt, Investigator
Detective: Martin Hewitt
Martin Hewitt, as an investigator, has been
compared favorably with Sherlock Holmes.
The Anthropologist at Large
by R. Austin Freeman
From John Thorndyke's Cases
Detective: Dr. Thorndyke
Dr. John Evelyn Thorndyke was unique in the
annals of crime fiction. R. Austin Freeman took an entirely different approach
to writing crime and detective fiction than did other writers of his time. This
is clear from his preface to John Thorndyke's Cases, in which he writes:
"The stories in this collection, inasmuch as they constitute a somewhat new
departure in this class of literature, require a few words of introduction. The
primary function of all fiction is to furnish entertainment to the reader, and
this fact has not been lost sight of. But the interest of so-called 'detective'
fiction is, I believe, greatly enhanced by a careful adherence to the probable,
and a strict avoidance of physical impossibilities; and, in accordance with this
belief, I have been scrupulous in confining myself to authentic facts and
practicable methods. The stories have, for the most part, a medico-legal motive,
and the methods of solution described in them are similar to those employed in
actual practice by medical jurists. The stories illustrate, in fact, the
application to the detection of crime of the ordinary methods of scientific
research. I may add that the experiments described have in all cases been
performed by me, and that the micro-photographs are, of course, from the actual
specimens."
The Brazilian Cat
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Detective: None
When you get a chance, compare this mystery
to the following two Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle: The Adventure of the Speckled
Band, and The Copper Beeches. You'll find a similar motive and some
things in common among all three stories, although this is not a Holmes story.
The Case of Oscar Brodski is a
landmark in detective story fiction. Historians of detective, crime, and murder
mystery fiction label it an "inverted" story -- a story in which the reader
witnesses everything before the detective comes on the scene. Freeman wrote, "Would it be possible to write a detective story in which from the outset
the reader was taken entirely into the author's confidence, was made an
actual witness of the crime and furnished with every fact that could
possibly be used in its detection? Would there be any story left when the
reader had all the facts? I believed that there would; and as an
experiment to test the justice of my belief, I wrote "The Case of Oscar
Brodski." Here the usual conditions are reversed; the reader knows
everything, the detective knows nothing, and the interest focuses on the
unexpected significance of trivial circumstances.
"By excellent judges on both sides of the Atlantic — including the editor
of 'Pearson's Magazine' — this story was so far approved of that I was
invited to produce others of the same type." (R. Austin Freeman, original
preface to the short story collection The Singing Bone.)
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