Nothing is impossible! By A Customer on March 4, 2002Format: Paperback Fans of impossible crimes and locked room mysteries will love this book. How can a horse and carriage vanish from inside a covered bridge? How can a master criminal escape from a locked cell? How can a man be stabbed while alone in a voting booth? Get this book and find out the answers to these and nine other ingenious puzzlers from the great Edward D. Hoch, the reigning king of impossible crimes. ( Amazon customer review)

Diagnosis: Impossible. the Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Hoch,Edward

Mystery

Crippen & Landru, Publishers

Impossible crimes -- locked rooms, sealed time capsules, the vanishing of a horse and buggy from within a covered bridge -- by a master of the fairplay detective story.

Diagnosis: Impossible--The Problems of Dr. Sam Hawthorne

Literature & Fiction

Hoch, Edward D.

Short Stories & Anthologies

Such a Mystery!  Mom never wanted her son Dave to become a policeman.  "For all the brains it takes, believe me, you might as well be in business with your uncles."  Besides, "All those gangsters and dope fiends and bookies and hatchet murderers and other such goniffs; isn't it possible you could get hurt some day?"  It's not difficult to solve crimes, Mom explains—and it's certainly not for her.  Dave and his very superior, Wellesley-educated wife, Shirley, have dinner with Mom in the Bronx every Friday evening.  Between the chicken soup and the schnecken, Dave talks about his current cases. Mom is not interested in what she describes as sophie-ological analysis and psycho-annihilating the suspects, but her long experience in dealing with scheming butchers, nosey neighbors, and eccentric relatives leads her to a logical solution to all Dave's mysteries. "By yourself, you should've guessed it," Mom says, but it takes Mom's insight into personality to unravel the crime.  Thirty years ago, Ellery Queen wrote that it was "sure as death and 'tectives" that a collection of Mom short stories would appear. Witty, wise, and filled with warmth, the Mom tales are some of the finest armchair detective stories ever written.

My Mother, the Detective: The Complete "Mom" Short Stories

James Yaffe

The creator of Judge Deborah Knott and Lieutenant Sigrid Harald, Margaret Maron is one of the finest contemporary mystery writers. Maron has a sensitivity about how time and place influence people and events, about how past generations continue to our world, about how the domestic situation can breed both warmth and quiet despair. In short, Maron sees the mystery story as concerned with people as well as puzzles. Shoveling Smoke contains twenty-two of Margaret Maron's best short stories, from her very first published mystery to her most recent tales. The book includes all of the short cases of Sigrid Harald and Deborah Knott, as well as other mysteries set in Knott's Colleton County. Some of the stories show how crime can emerge from ordinary situations; others recapture the Golden Age delight in twisty plotting with seemingly impossible crimes reminiscent of John Dickson Carr and dying messages harking back to Ellery Queen. But in all the stories, Maron's personal voice, her concern for people, is dominant. The book concludes with the first publication of a new story about Deborah Knott and a complete checklist of Margaret Maron's mystery novels and short stories.

Shoveling Smoke

Maron, Margaret

GUNSLINGING AND HISTORICAL DETECTION 
Probably the most honored of all current mystery short story writers, Edward D. Hoch combines ingenious plotting with a strong sense of time and place. The Ripper of Storyville is the first book collection of one of Hoch’s most imaginative creations, Ben Snow, the nineteenth century gunman who wanders through the West—and occasionally the East as well. The book begins with seven rare stories about Ben Snow published more than thirty years ago in The Saint Mystery Magazine and continues with seven more recent tales. Ben solves such mysteries as— The steamboat that vanishes as it leaves Vicksburg, Mississippi; The stallion that can be seen only by the victim; Crime in a Sacramento waxworks; The patent medicine man who claims to be able to stop time itself; Serial killings in old New Orleans; A mysterious death near a temple in Yucatan; and The killing of The Flying Man.

The Ripper of Storyville and Other Ben Snow Tales

United States

Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose

Be cautious; reading too many of Peter Lovesey's stories at once could have unexpected results. "Passion Killers" will make your toes curl for the hapless Mrs Palmer, and "The Odstock Curse" may well induce goosebumps as a Gypsy curse is repeated in the present. Among the fifteen tales are two featuring Peter Lovesey's forthright police detective, Peter Diamond, and two with the amateur sleuth, Bertie, Prince of Wales, in rumbustious form. The collection also include "The Pushover," winner of the Mystery Writers of America's Golden Mysteries short story prize, and "Quiet Please—We're Rolling," both nominated for Britain's Crime Writer's Association Short Story Dagger. 
Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose includes a complete checklist of Peter Lovesey's crime writing.

peter-lovesey

Contemporary

Full of color, humor, and suspense, the 10 Bridget Mooney stories are marvelous historical recreations by one of the modern masters of the mystery. Bridget encounters crimes and mysteries involving Ulysses S. Grant, Sarah Bernhardt, Lillie Langtry, Thomas Alva Edison, Ida Wells, Jesse James, and Mack Sennett.

Renowned Be Thy Grave; Or, The Murderous Miss Mooney

Carlson, P.M.

The plots involve murder, mayhem, rape, robbery, torture, dismemberment. The characters are gangsters, gun molls, drug dealers, casual killers, crooked cops and seedy politicians. This was the world of the ultra-hardboiled mystery digest magazines of the 1950's.

One Night Stands: Early Stories

Block,Lawrence

Dr. David Westbrook, a small-town veterinarian in Michigan, has a one-eyed, three-legged cat named Franken Kat, whom he found by the roadside and patched together.  "She's a terrific mouser," David explains.  "She can't catch anybody but she spooks the hell out of 'em and they change neighborhoods."  All creatures can be dark and dangerous, but Dave knows that humans can be the most dangerous of all.  With the cooperation of the local sheriff, David finds that his ministrations to cats, dogs, horses and other four-legged creatures lead him to dark side of a more complicated creatures — the two-legged kind.  And David discovers that just as he stitched Franken Kat back together, he sometimes has to reassemble people's lives, including his own.  Doug Allyn is one of the most gifted short-story writers in the mystery field.  He has won an Edgar for Best Short Story from the Mystery Writers of America, and two of his stories in All Creatures Dark and Dangerous won the Ellery Queen Readers Award.

All Creatures Dark and Dangerous: The Dr. David Westbrook Stories

Allyn, Doug

Dr. David Westbrook, a small-town veterinarian in Michigan, has a one-eyed, three-legged cat named Franken Kat, whom he found by the roadside and patched together. "She's a terrific mouser," David explains. "She can't catch anybody but she spooks the hell out of 'em and they change neighborhoods." All creatures can be dark and dangerous, but Dave knows that humans can be the most dangerous of all. With the cooperation of the local sheriff, David finds that his ministrations to cats, dogs, horses and other four-legged creatures lead him to dark side of a more complicated creatures — the two-legged kind. And David discovers that just as he stitched Franken Kat back together, he sometimes has to reassemble people's lives, including his own. Doug Allyn is one of the most gifted short-story writers in the mystery field. He has won an Edgar for Best Short Story from the Mystery Writers of America, and two of his stories in All Creatures Dark and Dangerous won the Ellery Queen Reade

All Creatures Dark and Dangerous : The Dr. David Westbrook Stories

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