Böcker utgivna av Penzler Publishers

For devotees of the Golden Age mystery, the impossible crime story represents the period's purest form: it presents the reader with a baffling scenario (a corpse discovered in a windowless room locked from the inside, perhaps), lays out a set of increasingly confounding clues and swiftly delivers an ingenious and satisfying solution. During the years between the two world wars, the best writers in the genre strove to outdo one another with unfathomable crime scenes and brilliant explanations, and the puzzling and clever tales they produced in those brief decades remain unmatched to this day.Among the Americans, some of these authors are still household names, inextricably linked to the locked room mysteries they devised: John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Clayton Rawson, Stuart Palmer. Others, associated with different styles of crime fiction, also produced great works-authors including Fredric Brown, MacKinlay Kantor, Craig Rice and Cornell Woolrich.All of these and more can be found in Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries, selected by Edgar Award-winning mystery expert and anthologist Otto Penzler. Featuring a delightful mix of well-known writers and unjustly-forgotten masters, the fourteen tales included herein highlight the best of the American impossible crime story, promising hours of entertainment for armchair sleuths young and old.

Jeremy Horton is a man denying his past, haunted by a dysfunctional childhood full of dark secrets-including the suspicious death of his younger sister.Married to lawyer Sarah and with children of his own, Jeremy keeps his eyes firmly focused on the present, never daring to glance in the rear-view mirror for fear of what he might see there. But when a chance encounter awakens the memories he's fought so hard to suppress, and the death of his estranged mother takes Jeremy back to his sleepy hometown and the scene of the family tragedy, he determines to finally uncover the truth behind his sister's death.Villages hold long memories, and Jeremy's presence quickly becomes an unwelcome reminder of nameless cruelties and shameful secrets. The more he learns, the more the stories from his past take on a sinister significance, leading him to question his own innocence. Meanwhile, someone desperately wants him gone, and their efforts to drive him out escalate as Jeremy's anxiety spirals out of control. Do they fear him for what he knows-or for what he's done?

Sometimes, the police aren't the best suited to solve a crime. Depending on the case, you may find that a retired magician, a schoolteacher, a Broadway producer or a nun have the necessary skills to suss out a killer. Or, in other cases, a blind veteran, or a publisher, or a hard-drinking attorney, or a mostly-sober attorney... or, indeed, any sort of detective you could think of might be able to best the professionals when it comes to comprehending strange and puzzling murders.At least, that's what the authors from the Golden Age of American mystery fiction would have you think. For decades in the middle of the twentieth century, the country's best-selling authors produced delightful tales in which all types of eccentrics used rarified knowledge to interpret confounding clues. And for even longer, in the decades that have followed, these characters have continued to entertain new audiences with every new generation that discovers them.Edgar Award-winning anthologist Otto Penzler selects some of the greatest American short stories from the era. With authors including Ellery Queen, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Cornell Woolrich, Erle Stanley Gardner and Anthony Boucher, this collection is a treat for those who know and love this celebrated period in literary history and a great introduction to its best writers for the uninitiated.