The History Of Mystery
(2001 - Collectors Press)

(by Max Allan Collins) To begin with, at 11-by-12-inches this book is a bit unwieldy. In his introduction, the writer explains his focus is strictly on the sleuths of the genre, his chapters being; Mysterious Beginnings, Pulp Fiction, Detective Comics, Dilettante Detectives, Peepers, and Further Suspects, along with seven more 'featurettes' on the classic leading writers. There are many, many exhibits of movie posters and book, magazine, comic, pulp & paperback covers. The display seems designed to project a chaotic & jumbled mess - most images overlap, or are being overlapped by other ones - there are two-dozen instances where smaller images are needlessly laid over the book's central gutter (though know that another five large images still remain satisfactory while allowed to spread so). Captioning is the title, release year & media associated with the image, many times with an anecdote or additional piece of commentary, and sometimes with an artist identified. While the text occasionally waxes rhapsodic in regards to illustrators, I feel the artists got short-shrift in this overview. The book has 196 pages, of which 120 could be said to have more art than not, with only 25 being featured large reproductions and 95 being multiple images gathered together. The 'well-presented' artists are: David Edward Byrd, John Byrne, Alfred James Dewey, Gerald Gregg (2), Ed Hannigan, E.H. Hart, Lawrence Hoffman, Ron Lesser, Robert Maguire**, Leo Morey, Sidney Paget, Jim Pearsall, George Rozen, Jerome Rozen, and UNKNOWN (12).