Golden Age Bibliomysteries

In these classic mystery tales, literature is a matter of life or death

Of crime fiction’s many sub-genres, none is so reflexive and so intriguing as the “bibliomystery”: stories that involve crimes set, somehow, in the world of books. 

In Vincent Starrett’s “A Volume of Poe,” a bookseller is murdered; in Ellery Queen’s “The Adventure of the Three R’s,” the detective tracks the disappearance of a local Missouri author; and a killer stalks the stacks of the New York Public Library in Robert L. Blochman’s “Death Walks in Marble Halls.”

With fourteen tales of bibliophilic transgression from the Golden Age of the mystery genre (the decades between the two World Wars), this volume collects stories guaranteed to entertain, featuring work from well-remembered authors…