12 English detective stories

These twelve stories provide an entertaining exploration of this extensive and fascinating corner of English popular fiction, celebrating the detective's intellectual and intuitive powers when confronted with murder, theft, and other mysteries. The main focus of this collection is from the 1890s to the 1920s, the period when the classic English detective story was at its confident and original best, but it also offers examples from earlier and later periods. Presenting a balance of classic and more unusual stories, and featuring works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Michael Innes, this anthology will appeal to both the newcomer and aficionado of the genre.

Michael Cox is a senior commissioning editor with Oxford University Press. He has edited The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (1986), Victorian Ghost Stories (1991) (both with R. A. Gilbert), Victorian Detective Stories (1992), The Oxford Book of Historical Stories (with Jack Adrian, 1994), The Oxford Book of Spy Stories (1996), The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (1996), and Twelve Tales of the Supernatural and Twelve Victorian Ghost Stories (1997), both in the Oxford Twelves series.