When we think of great mystery stories, our minds tend to go to the many, many mystery novels packed on the shelves of bookstores, libraries, and probably our own homes. However, since their earliest days, stories of crime and detection have been as prevalent among short stories as among novels; and many of the best practitioners of the form often practiced in both modes, as you’ll see from these 10 short mystery collections that will keep you turning the pages long after you should have turned out the lights…
Tales for a Stormy Night
Known for such novels as A Gentle Murderer, The Pale Betrayer, and A Town of Masks (to name just a few), Dorothy Salisbury Davis is an Edgar Award-winning author and a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. In Tales for a Stormy Night, she assembles 15 of her most spine-tingling mystery stories, including “Mrs. Norris Observes,” featuring Davis’ popular recurring character, the crime-solving housekeeper Mrs. Norris, as well as several other page-turning mysteries.
To Cut a Long Story Short
Hailed as a “master entertainer” (Time), author Jeffrey Archer has demonstrated his “gift for plot that can only be described as genius” (Daily Telegraph) in an array of New York Times bestselling novels. Now, however, he has boiled his prose down to its essence, “producing a collection of fourteen cleverly twisting tales” (Publishers Weekly) that are sure to give fans of his “cunning plots, silken style” (The New York Times) just what they’re looking for again and again!
Lord Peter Views the Body
Dorothy L. Sayers was an acclaimed playwright, scholar, and much more, but it is for the adventures of her gentleman sleuth Lord Peter Whimsey that she is best remembered. Lord Peter Whimsey starred in more than a dozen books, all told, and secured Sayers a place as “one of the greatest mystery story writers” (Los Angeles Times).
Set between the two World Wars, Lord Peter Views the Body collects a dozen of Lord Peter Whimsey’s most iconic cases in a short story collection that will keep you turning the pages long into the night.
Enough Rope
Author of more than 100 books, winner of just about every award that a mystery writer could ever hope to attain, Lawrence Block is one of the biggest and best names in modern crime and mystery writing. And in Enough Rope, which he himself calls “a huge doorstop of a thing,” he collects 83 stories spanning almost his entire writing career, including several Edgar Award nominees (and a few winners) and stories that have been adapted to film, TV, and radio in a must-read collection for fans and newcomers alike. Read the whole tome cover to cover, or pick and choose among short stories to while away an afternoon.
Poirot Investigates
There is perhaps no name more inextricably associated with mystery than the “Queen of Crime” herself, Agatha Christie. Her most beloved character was none other than the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, whose adventures she chronicled in more than 20 novels and over 40 short stories.
Several of the latter are collected in Poirot Investigates, which gives new readers a perfect introduction to one of mystery’s best-loved detectives—and old fans a pleasant return that they can dip into time and again.
The Nine Mile Walk
New York Times bestselling author Harry Kemelman is best known for his stories of the crime-solving Rabbi Small. Before creating that iconic character, however, Kemelman had already introduced readers to another memorable amateur sleuth, the quick-witted college professor Nicky Welt. Now, readers who love the logic puzzles and brain-teasing mysteries of Kemelman’s work can read all of his Nicky Welt stories in one place in The Nine Mile Walk.
Married People
One of America’s most popular early mystery writers, Mary Roberts Rinehart helped to invent the so-called “old dark house” school of storytelling with her play The Bat, which was adapted to the screen numerous times beginning in 1926 and was a partial inspiration for the creation of Batman. Married People contains 10 short stories which showcase Rinehart’s talent for mystery, comedy, and pathos—in this case, 10 stories about married life that may end in “till death do us part” sooner rather than later.
The Innocence of Father Brown
English author, philosopher, and critic, G. K. Chesterton is legendary for such books as The Man Who Was Thursday and The Man Who Knew Too Much—but only a little behind those are his stories of the detective priest Father Brown, a stout and unassuming clergyman who nevertheless manages to solve some of the most intractable cases in all of crime fiction. Father Brown made his debut in the short story “The Blue Cross,” which is collected here alongside 11 other tales introducing readers to one of Chesterton’s most enduring creations.
A Spot of Folly
Ruth Rendell is the bestselling author of such award-winning novels as A Dark-Adapted Eye and A Demon in My View. In A Spot of Folly, she brings her mastery of “psychological insight…and, not infrequently, teeth-chattering terror” (New York Times) to “ten and a quarter” new tales of murder and mayhem in her own inimitable style. The result is “deliciously riveting, all the more so because Rendell’s extraordinary ability to delve coolly and forensically into the dustiest nooks of the human psyche is amplified, not diminished, by the short story form” (The Guardian).
The Pyramid
Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander series has become an international bestseller, adapted to the screen in both films and television, where the character has been played by the likes of Kenneth Branagh and Rolf Lassgard. In The Pyramid, Mankell shares some of Wallander’s dark and chilling earliest cases with tales that inspired the recent Netflix series Young Wallander, plunging readers into “a marvel of spare, purposeful prose and artful storytelling” (St. Petersburg Times).
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