SLEUTHS OF THE CENTURY

Sam Spade is practically the only headliner absent from this

centennial feast of the familiar. Though the veteran anthologists have dug up little-known gems by Jacques Futrelle, Anthony

Boucher, and Donald E. Westlake, most of the 25 top-drawer selections by Chesterton, Christie, Sayers, Queen, Carr, Simenon,

Chandler, Stout, McBain, Rendell, Block, Hillerman, Paretsky, Mosley, and both Macdonald (Ross) and MacDonald (John D.)

have been certified by enough earlier reprintings to make this collection indispensable to newcomers to the genre and unnecessary

to anybody else.