What do you think?
Rate this book
Ten Great Mysteries
This book has ten great mysteries for you to enjoy. Editied by Howard Haycraft and John Beecraft and published by Doubleday.
640 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
3 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Howard Haycraft
43 books10 followersA publisher, editor, critic and anthologist who wrote one of the first serious books of criticism of the mystery/detective genre, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and times of the Detective Story , still in print and considered a classic. He also edited a number of interesting and important anthologies.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 25, 2021
I picked this book up at the thrift store more as a gift for my mother than for my own perusal, but I decided that I should dip my toe into the genre mainly because the first story is The Maltese Falcon, and I love the movie. It read almost exactly like the movie.
The next few stories were trifles about Perry Mason and by Agatha Christie that were more interested in plotting and the twists therein than they were in characterization.
The Case of the Late Pig offered a somewhat welcome diversion and No Motive by du Maurier was a fine story.
The Dancing Detective by William Irish was an interesting story about a serial killer and was an anomaly for this tome.
The collection ends with The Franchise Affair by Josephine Trey which was a thoroughly interesting novel without all of the tricks employed by most of the other authors. The author created a world and characters that were easy for a reader to immerse themselves in.
The next few stories were trifles about Perry Mason and by Agatha Christie that were more interested in plotting and the twists therein than they were in characterization.
The Case of the Late Pig offered a somewhat welcome diversion and No Motive by du Maurier was a fine story.
The Dancing Detective by William Irish was an interesting story about a serial killer and was an anomaly for this tome.
The collection ends with The Franchise Affair by Josephine Trey which was a thoroughly interesting novel without all of the tricks employed by most of the other authors. The author created a world and characters that were easy for a reader to immerse themselves in.
May 21, 2022
It's not often you find a collection that doesn't have one or two rotten tomatoes in it, but I enjoyed these mysteries, with only one exception of "The Franchise Affair". The FA was way too long and filled with, well, lots of filler that did not serve to move the story forward. I think it was an attempt to add "color" to the story, but it was just so unnecessary and made it drag. Still, I definitely recommend the collection.
January 10, 2022
Liked some more then others, as usual.
December 13, 2013
A solid collection, well curated and representative of the many styles of classic detective fiction.
The only weakness to the collection is that some excellent authors compare badly with their peers because of the mixing of short story and novels. Detective fiction needs witnesses, evidence, and clues to be discovered in the correct order, and because the short story format lacks the space for the detective to run down clues or follow leads the genre turns to coincidence and a light touch rather than discovery and legwork to keep the story moving. The volume opens with The Maltese Falcon, Hammett's masterpiece of characterization and mood. This long immersion in seedy San Francisco is followed by Sayers' always amusing Peter Whimsey at his most flip in "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head", which is a story that I love to reread in most circumstances, but on the heels of Sam Spade's moral quandaries this lightest of all of Whimsey's adventures appears embarrassingly fluffy.
Also, I would not have made the same selection of stories from Allingham and Du Maurier.
The only weakness to the collection is that some excellent authors compare badly with their peers because of the mixing of short story and novels. Detective fiction needs witnesses, evidence, and clues to be discovered in the correct order, and because the short story format lacks the space for the detective to run down clues or follow leads the genre turns to coincidence and a light touch rather than discovery and legwork to keep the story moving. The volume opens with The Maltese Falcon, Hammett's masterpiece of characterization and mood. This long immersion in seedy San Francisco is followed by Sayers' always amusing Peter Whimsey at his most flip in "The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head", which is a story that I love to reread in most circumstances, but on the heels of Sam Spade's moral quandaries this lightest of all of Whimsey's adventures appears embarrassingly fluffy.
Also, I would not have made the same selection of stories from Allingham and Du Maurier.
Read
August 7, 2014Currently re-reading because the first mystery in the volume is The Maltese Falcon, this year's Big Read selection in Wichita. I wish this hadn't been chosen as a community read. It's drenched in unredeeming and unredeemed machismo and homophobia that are difficult to stomach. For all its merits as a classic in the genre, or even the representative classic of its genre, it's an unfortunate choice for a community event. I hope we'll see some discussion of the difficult aspects of the book, but I'm not holding my breath.
As I recall, the other mysteries in the volume are all pretty good, especially the Peter Wimsey story, which is one of the few genuinely light-hearted Wimseys.
As I recall, the other mysteries in the volume are all pretty good, especially the Peter Wimsey story, which is one of the few genuinely light-hearted Wimseys.
November 4, 2014
Rating & comments are on the short stories & novellas -- I'm rating the two novels separatly:
I enjoyed almost all of the mysteries in this volume. Mysteries from this era (1920s - 1950s) appeal to me because they're contemporary enough that I still understand most of the social customs, etc., but the plot and solution tend to rely more on intellect than current mysteries do, since the characters don't have the same technology. (Characters in danger can't whip out a cell phone, and the police can't solve a crime simply by putting DNA in a database.)
I enjoyed almost all of the mysteries in this volume. Mysteries from this era (1920s - 1950s) appeal to me because they're contemporary enough that I still understand most of the social customs, etc., but the plot and solution tend to rely more on intellect than current mysteries do, since the characters don't have the same technology. (Characters in danger can't whip out a cell phone, and the police can't solve a crime simply by putting DNA in a database.)
Read
September 13, 2011Never finished, but a friend was thrilled that it had a Rex Stout mystery that she didn't know existed.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews