Toward the Golden Age: The Stories That Turned Crime to Gold

The popularity of the detective story began with the Victorian-era debut of Sherlock Holmes, whose adventures inspired legions of imitators. Subsequent tales of malfeasance and its deduction gradually took a decided turn away from melodrama and toward plausibility, leading to a Golden Age of crime fiction during the 1920s and 30s. The 15 short stories in this anthology, which date from 1905 to 1921, trace the development of an increasingly sophisticated genre even as they abound in the timeless allure of a riveting mystery.