Customer Reviews

They Died in Vain: Overlooked, Underappreciated and Forgotten Mystery Novels

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I ordered this book after reading Marilyn Stasio's encomium in a recent issue of the NYTBR and I have to say, she described a totally different book.

I thought the book would be along the lines of the best and most underlooked books in the past 100 years of the mystery. I don't know, but for some reason the people whom editor Jim Huang polled don't read books apparently that are more than 10 years old. I would say that eighty per cent of the novels they talk about were written in the 1990s. Why? Don't these booksellers and crime aficionados know any history? Occasionally here and there, a reader will recommend an Elizabeth Daly or a Helen Reilly, a Marco Page and a Herbert Bream, but most of the time, I feel that these book people are still trying to sell off the books they have large piles of on the remainder section of their little stores. Books published in 1994. Forgettable books, undistinguished authors.

And half of these essayists are into "cozies" in a big way! And if you don't write a series character, forget it, no one is going to recommend you. And also, or so it seems, the booksellers are receommending people who came to their stores to do signings and who charmed the pants off of them.

That said, many of the individual essays are nicely written and I did make a little list of some books that sound good--the Paula Gosling and the Patricia Carlon for example. It's not a terrible collection, but the publicity (and Huang's foreword) are absurdly misleading when they say that the books under discussion "span the history of the genre from 1878 through 2000." Better luck next time.

As the noted mystery critic Marilyn Stasio pointed out in the New York Times Book review this book is a great way to find new and obscure books and authors. What's really wonderful about it is that each and every one of the essay writers feels a deep passion for the book they write about and often stray from the beaten path to turn the reader on to the obscure and wonderful. In a world of homogenized book/music/greeting card superstores and a handful of highly corporate publishers "They Died in Vain" is a blessing from people who really love mystery novels.