Great American Detective Stories

Notice: No anthology is a single-handed job, and every editor must happily acknowledge the assistance of a host of collaborators. In this case, I am particularly glad to thank those splendid scholars of the whodunit, James Sandoe, Vincent Starrett, William Targ, and Lee Wright, for invaluable suggestions, and various of the authors represented, especially Antonio Helú, Stuart Palmer, T. S. Stribling, Cornell Woolrich, and above all Ellery Queen, for their helpful kindness.

If the reader is indignant with me for the omission of his own favorite, I offer him the following excuses:

  one, it is too easily available elsewhere;

  two, I couldn’t clear the rights to it;

  three, and most probably true, the explanation which Dr. Johnson offered to a critic of his dictionary: “Ignorance, Madam; pure ignorance.”

A.B.