From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Mystery maven Penzler offers a unique anthology of 19 classic mystery and puzzle stories whose appeal, paradoxically, derives from their ambiguous endings. Penzler complements the epitome of the unresolved riddle tale—Frank Stockton's "The Lady, or The Tiger?"—with the author's lesser known but similarly vexing "The Discourager of Hesitancy," a tale of a dangerously arranged marriage. The volume's highlights, however, come from the best known and least known authors—Ray Bradbury and Peter Godfrey. Bradbury's exceptional gifts of subtle suggestion and suspense are on full display in two tales of a serial killer plaguing a quiet Illinois community, "The Whole Town's Sleeping" and its enigmatic sequel, "At Midnight, in the Month of June." Godfrey, an undeservedly obscure South African writer, contributes the superb, psychologically twisted "The Lady and the Dragon," about a photographer overcome by a powerful obsession. Additional compelling conundrums come from such notables as Roald Dahl, Mark Twain, Stanley Ellin and Aldous Huxley.
(Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
As mystery guru and acclaimed anthologist Penzler puts it in the introduction to this short story collection, if you like your mysteries with satisfying endings, all loose ends neatly tied up, this is
not the collection for you. Penzler promises ultimate frustration, as each story ends with a cul de sac in which the ending is deliberately withheld. Here are 19 riddles and puzzle mysteries, including such early takes on the theme as Mark Twain's "A Medieval Romance," published in 1870; O. Henry's "Thimble, Thimble," published in 1908; and the most famous of all cliffhangers, Frank Stockton's "The Lady, or The Tiger?" published in 1882. (Also included are Stockton's own continuation of the riddle in "The Discourager of Hesitancy" and Jack Moffitt's "The Lady and the Tiger" from 1948.) Roald Dahl, Ray Bradbury, Aldous Huxley, and Stanley Ellin are among the other masters of frustration on display in this volume. A fine showcase for a rare and difficult form of the mystery story; fun to read and made more fun by Penzler's lively introduction.
Connie FletcherCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
