Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 38, Fall/Winter 1979

Editor’s Note

Dear Reader:

Every mystery has its secret.

Its innermost secret.

Let us divide the crime-mystery story into two all-inclusive categories — the tale of crime with detection and the tale of crime without detection.

In the first category — crime with detection — there are subdivisions: deductive, intuitional, and procedural detective stories, dealing with both realistic and bizarre situations, the latter including the locked room, the miracle problem, and the impossible crime; all these subgenres contain a detective, amateur or professional, or a law-enforcement agency whose common purpose is to discover the culprit and uncover the secret of the mystery.

In the second category — crime without detection — there is obviously no sleuth, no man or woman hunter; but even when the reader knows the identity of the criminal from the beginning, there is still a secret to be penetrated and disclosed. If it is not the secret of who, it could be the secret of how, or of when or where, and often of why — why did the criminal commit the crime, why did the victim invite or cause the crime?

In the 18 stories chosen for this collection you will be challenged by many different secrets — who did it, how was it done, when did it occur, where did it take place, why did it happen? The secrets are in the hearts of the stories, in the hearts and minds of the characters, and it is for you to investigate at the side of the detective or the author, matching wits wit for wit — or to be your own detective, probing, questing, examining...

“Nothing is secret which shall not be made manifest.” So saith Luke, and so, in the 18 stories which follow, you can look behind the scenes, pull aside the curtains, push away the screens, peer through the veils, remove the masks, break the seals, open the doors — expose the deep, dark secrets of mystery. You will have the help of some of the greatest mystery writers and detectives of the past and present — Erle Stanley Gardner’s Sheriff Eldon; Edward D. Hoch’s Captain Leopold, Jeffery Rand, and Nick Velvet; Hugh Pentecost’s John Jericho; Lawrence G. Blochman’s Dr. Daniel Webster Coffee; Lloyd Biggie, Jr.’s Grandfather Rastin; Barry Perowne’s A. J. Raffles; Lawrence Treat’s Homicide Squad; Ellery Queen’s E.Q. — they won’t let you down, they won’t fail you.

Ellery Queen