David Stuart Davies (ed) Classic Locked-Room Mysteries

 

David Stuart Davies (ed) - Classic Locked-Room Mysteries - Macmillan - 2016

Includes stories by R Austin Freeman, Edgar Allan Poe, Jacques Futrelle etc

An interesting collection put together by veteran writer and noted Sherlockian David Stuart Davies.

I`ll have to be frank and admit that a few weeks have passed since I read this.

I do recall thinking that DSD, who I respect and admire very much, had allowed himself quite a bit of leeway on the question of what constitutes a locked-room mystery. If you`re a bit of a purist at heart and require all LRMs to conform to the classic format (A crime has taken place in a room which was locked from the inside before the event and which remains locked afterwards. How did the perpetrator enter the room and how did he escape ?)  then you probably won`t care for this. If you take a broader view of the matter then read on. 

Some of the stories are better than others, but perhaps that`s to be expected.

In his introduction, DSD remarks that some of the authors in this collection "are now forgotten names, their work unjustly neglected for many years". That to me is the strength of this collection. While many of the usual suspects (Conan Doyle, Austin Freeman etc) appear in these pages, a number of the writers were new to me, even after years as an avid reader of this sort of thing.  

Most of the stories in the collection date from the Victorian and Edwardian ages. Overall I think this volume has something to offer to newcomers to the genre of vintage detective fiction, while still finding something fresh to offer to those of us who are long-standing afficionados.