Detecting Men: A Reader's Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Men [Paperback]

Willetta L. Heising (Author)

Book Description

Series: Detecting Men | Publication Date: March 1998

From the Macavity Award winning author of Detecting Women.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Need to know the titles of the 16 Johnny Fedora secret agent books that Shaun Lloyd McCarthy wrote under his Desmond Cory pseudonym between 1951 and 1971? See page 67 of this immediately essential guide to everything you ever wanted to learn about mysteries written by men. The volume is a worthy successor to Willetta L. Heising's Detecting Women. On page 142, you'll find the four Nick Duffy books that famous British novelist Julian Barnes wrote under the name of Dan Kavanagh, and on page 154 you'll find out how to pronounce John T. Lescroart's last name--(LES-kwah). In fact, there's a need-to-know nugget on every page of this informative and entertaining enterprise.

From Library Journal

This helpful guide to some 600 contemporary male mystery writers, their series, and their protagonists is the much-anticipated partner to Heising's multi-award-winning Detecting Women 2 (Purple Moon, 1996), and it certainly satisfies expectations. Preceded by a useful introduction, "How To Use This Book," the text is divided into eight chapters: "Master List," "Mystery Types," Series Characters," Settings," "Title Chronology," "Alphabetical List of Titles," "Pseudonyms," and "Mystery Book Awards." By far the largest chapter, "Master List" includes biographical data, a checklist of titles, American publication dates, series characters, awards, and some movie tie-in information. Mysteries are divided into four typesApolice procedural, private-eye, espionage, and those amateur detectives, with 69 mystery backgrounds, e.g., ecclesiastical and religious, black detectives, applied to all but espionage. All works are cross-referenced by title, setting, chronology, and mystery type. A quicker resource than big books like the St. James Guide to Crime & Mystery (St. James, 1996, 4th ed.), this is a handy reference anywhere mysteries are popular.ARex Klett, Mitchell Community Coll., Statesville, NC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Purple Moon Press (March 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964459337
• ISBN-13: 978-0964459335
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #785,332 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The essential mystery-reader's guide, December 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Detecting Men: A Reader's Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Men (Paperback)

OK, you know the drill: I love this book, it was a great read, it brought my family closer together, blah, blah, blah. Seriously folks, this book is different. This book could save your LIFE.

I work in a bookstore, and in my line of work, I never can tell who the next person through the door will be. I stand behind the counter, and I don't know whether the next customer carries the bullet with my name on it. But I do know this: every customer comes armed with a question. For all I know, some lunatic may bust in, size me up for lead fillings, and shout, "Freeze, punk! What was the eighth Nero Wolfe novel, who's character is Doc Ford, and what book do I have to buy to get James Grady's short story, Kiss the Sky?"

Now, if I were unprepared, I'd be worm food, but because I have Detecting Men, I can shout back, "Over My Dead Body, Randy Wayne White, and Unusual Suspects!" as I dive for cover. Mollified with info, he heads back to his basement apartment. I live to fight another day.

Detecting Men. Because the life you save may be your own.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding reference work for mystery lovers!, September 1, 2000

By 

Author Bill Peschel "Writers Gone Wild" (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Detecting Men: A Reader's Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Men (Paperback)

No, this is not a sequel to "The Rules." "Detecting Men" is a gorgeously produced, well-edited and probably comprehensive catalog of over 600 men who have written mystery series.

Take note of all those qualifiers, because the format is slightly different from Heising's companion volume, "Detecting Women 3." While that reference (a third edition, hence the "3") covers all living female writers and a good portion of those who have since died, space limitations forced "Detecting Men" to limit itself. So, while Anna Katherine Green (who wrote mysteries back in the 1880s) and Agatha Christie are in "DW3" you won't find Ellery Queen and Rex Stout in "DM." Even under those restrictions, "Detecting Men" still offers nearly 450 pages of information, compared with 384 pages in the other book.

So what do you get for your money? A paragraph on each author accompanied by a checklist of each series book, with notations for those which were nominated or winners of writing awards like the Edgar, Anthony and Shamus.

While that section is fascinating in itself for the minutae about the authors, the second half of "DM" contains charts, charts and more charts that can help the series reader locate all kinds of information. Readers of police procedurals will find four pages listing authors, when they wrote, the character's name and profession and setting. Looking for mysteries involving journalists? "DM" lists 25, from Dick Belsky' reporter Lucy Shannon to Collin Wilcox' Stephen Drake (a newspaper reporter with ESP). There's 14 small-town sleuths, two surburban detectives, 15 gay and lesbian detectives and 14 disabled detectives. Detectives are also listed by first name, settings, the year they appeared, and by title. The latter category appeals to the trivia buff in me; not surprisingly, there are a long list of titles beginning with dead, death, and murder, but I didn't expect 31 beginning with "gently." Sounds like the ideal niche for a book collector.

The pseudonym section can help straighten out who wrote want, as well as help find a favorite author's other works. P.C. Doherty, for example, has published books under his own name as well as under Michael Clynes, Ann Dukthas, C.L. Grace and Paul Harding and, possibly, Anna Apostolou. Best-selling author Jack Higgins ("The Eagle Has Landed") has also written as Martin Fallon, James Grapham and Hugh Marlowe. This section may prove disappointing to those who learn that Lydia Adamson's light-hearted animal mysteries was, in fact, written by Frank King.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It Slices, It Dices, January 25, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Detecting Men: A Reader's Guide and Checklist for Mystery Series Written by Men (Paperback)

No, this book is not a Vegematic. Call it the Cuisinart of crime. Ms. Heising takes her well-researched author bios, book chronologies, award info and handy cross-references, blends them together and produces this tasty concoction of P.I.s, M.O.s and FYIs. Great book!