The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery (The Detective Club)

By Israel Zangwill

Book Overview

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world s first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since. The Detective Story Club, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891, and re-published by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called The Perfect Crime, Israel Zangwill s novel invented the concept of the locked room mystery and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter. A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled. Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed? This new edition includes a brand new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert, Dr John Curran, author of Agatha Christie s Secret Notebooks ."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0008137285
• ISBN13: 9780008137281
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: Collins Crime Club
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.8" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Historically significant and a great read

The fact that the mystery disappears after the second chapter in no way detracts from the joy of this book. From widowed boarding house attendants to freeloading artists to a detective that might as well be the anti-Sherlock Holmes, this is one of the funniest and meanest books to come out of the Victorian era. Known primarily for Children of the Ghetto, Israel Zangwill was a Jewish Victorian writer with an eye for the foibles and idicoies of every day life. The mystery is not so much abandoned as seen from a societal basis. We have the glory hounds, the newspaper stories, the sensationalists, and the vendors who gather outside the scene of the murder to sell food to the tourists. When the murderer is revealed, it's a bit of a letdown, but the trip from the beginning to the end is so enjoyable that you don't mind.