One of literature’s first, greatest, and most dastardly gentleman rogues finally joins the Penguin Classics crime list First published in 1900, A Prince of Swindlers introduces Simon Carne, a gentleman thief predating both E. W. Hornung’s A. J. Raffles and Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin. The British Viceroy first meets Carne while traveling in India. Charmed, he invites the reclusive hunchbacked scholar to London, little suspecting that his guest is actually an adventurer and a master of disguise. Carne—aided by his loyal butler, Belton—embarks on a crime spree, stealing from London’s richest citizens and then making fools of them by posing as a detective investigating the thefts. Now back in print after over a century, Guy Boothby’s tale promises to delight a new generation of crime fans. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Most Complete Collection of Impossible Crime Stories Ever Assembled, with puzzling mysteries by Stephen King, Dashiell Hammett, Lawrence Block, Agatha Christie, Georges Simenon, Dorothy L. Sayers, P. G. Wodehouse, Erle Stanley Gardner, and many, many more THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF LOCKED-ROOM MYSTERIES: An empty desert, a lonely ski slope, a gentleman’s study, an elevator car—nowhere is a crime completely impossible. Edgar Award–winning editor Otto Penzler has collected sixty-eight of the all-time best impossible-crime stories from almost two hundred years of the genre. In addition to the many classic examples of the form—a case of murder in a locked room or otherwise inaccessible place, solved by a brilliant sleuth—this collection expands the definition of the locked room to include tales of unbelievable thefts and incredible disappearances. Among these pages you’ll find stories with evocative titles like “The Flying Death”, “The Man From Nowhere”, “A Terribly Strange Bed”, and “The Theft of the Bermuda Penny”, not to mention appearances by some of the cleverest characters in all of crime, including Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Georges Simenon’s Jules Maigret, Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot, Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op, and many more. Featuring • Unconventional means of murder • Pilfered jewels • Shocking solutions Includes • Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, the first detective story and the first locked-room mystery • Masters of the short story form: Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen, Carter Dickson, and Stanley Ellin A VINTAGE CRIME/BLACK LIZARD ORIGINAL

Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, ruthless, and brilliant criminals in mystery fiction, for the biggest compendium of bad guys (and girls) ever assembled. The best mysteries--whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy--have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations--and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure. The 72 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most depraved of psyches, from iconic antiheroes like Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin and Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu to contemporary delinquents like Lawrence Block's Ehrengraf and Donald Westlake's Dortmunder, and include unforgettable tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, O. Henry, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward D. Hoch, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, and many more.

Vols. 28-30 accompanied by separately published parts with title: Indices and necrology.

Volume 13 Number 4 of The Mystery Fancier, Fall 1992, contains: "An Interview with Ed Mcbain," by Robert E. Skinner, "Science and Technology in the Writings of Frederick Irving Anderson," by Ben Fisher, "Father Brown's Final Adventure," by Joe R. Christopher, "The Exit of Father Brown," by Ola Strom, "The Short Stop," by Marvin Lachman, "Crime Novelists as Writers of Children's Fiction VIII, Doroth L. Sayers," by William A. S. Sarjeant, "The Greatest Misogynist of Them All," by Maryell Cleary, "The Backward Reviewer," by William F. Deeck, "It's About Crime," by Marvin Lachman.