The Complete Crime Stories.
A collection of mystery stories from the inventor of the genre.
In just five stories, Edgar Allan Poe laid down most of the conventions of detective fiction. The Great Detective (Auguste Dupin) and his slightly stupid sidekick; the locked-room mystery; the notion of armchair detection; the secret-service story; the use of cyphers, false clues and the least likely suspect; we owe them all to Poe.
'Crime Masterworks' is a library of the greatest crime fiction ever written, chosen with the help of today's leading crimewriters and critics. However, they are categorised - hard-boiled, suspense, police procedural - all books in the series are the best of their kind.
