The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits [antikvár]

Introduction THE CHRONICLES OF CRIME This anthology is the first of a kind. It's the first to bring together a selection of stories featuring detectives from the entire history of the civilised world. Stories about historical detectives are relatively new, though they are not as new as some may feel. To many, the historical detective field burst forth fully fledged with the Brother Cadfael novels of Ellis Peters. There is no doubt that Miss Peters's superbly developed works created a little niche of their own with the medieval mystery story, and that world has grown substantially in the last ten years. But the historical detective story has been around a while longer than that, though until Ellis Peters's creation, it lacked an identity. So, what do I mean by the historical detective story. Quite simply it's the union of two much older literary fields - the historical fiction field with that of the detective story, but the emphasis has to be on the detective element, otherwise it is nothing more than a historical story containing some element of mystery. For the purposes of this anthology, and to give it some structure, I have been rather stringent in my definition of the historical detective story. Strictly speaking any detective story set in a period earlier than its composition would have to be regarded as historical. But I personally believe that any writer who can draw upon his direct personal memories of the past is still, in his own mind, writing a relatively contemporary work. I have thus been very restrictive and decided that a historical detective story should, at the very least, be set at a period before the author's birth, and to all intents and purposes that really means before the twentieth century. I've made one exception to that self-imposed rule for a special reason that will be obvious when you encounter it. As you will see from the contents page, the stories I have selected range from as far back as 1400 bc, down through the years to the time of Sherlock Holmes. En route they pass through ancient Greece and Rome, the mystic Orient, the Middle Ages and Elizabethan period, I