Edgar Award-winning editor Otto Penzler's new anthology brings together the most cunning, ruthless, and brilliant criminals in mystery fiction, for the biggest compendium of bad guys (and girls) ever assembled. The best mysteries--whether detective, historical, police procedural, cozy, or comedy--have one thing in common: a memorable perpetrator. For every Sherlock Holmes or Sam Spade in noble pursuit, there's a Count Dracula, a Lester Leith, or a Jimmy Valentine. These are the rogues and villains who haunt our imaginations--and who often have more in common with their heroic counterparts than we might expect. Now, for the first time ever, Otto Penzler gathers the iconic traitors, thieves, con men, sociopaths, and killers who have crept through the mystery canon over the past 150 years, captivating and horrifying readers in equal measure. The 72 handpicked stories in this collection introduce us to the most depraved of psyches, from iconic antiheroes like Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin and Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu to contemporary delinquents like Lawrence Block's Ehrengraf and Donald Westlake's Dortmunder, and include unforgettable tales by Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Washington Irving, Jack London, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis, O. Henry, Edgar Wallace, Leslie Charteris, Erle Stanley Gardner, Edward D. Hoch, Max Allan Collins, Loren D. Estleman, and many more.

The silent film era was known in part for its cliffhanger serials and air of suspense that kept audiences returning to theaters week after week. Icons such as Douglas Fairbanks, Laurel and Hardy, Lon Chaney and Harry Houdini were among those who graced the dark and shadowy screen. This reference guide to silent films with mystery and detective content lists more than 1,500 titles in one of entertainment's most popular and enduring genres. While most of the films examined are from North America, mystery films from around the world are included.

Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard (1876-1922). It turns out that this curious combination of names is a contrivance and so it attracts twentieth-first century doubt. His Edwardian friends shortened it to Hex. But there is little to doubt about his achievements. While still at school he was asked to play cricket for Scotland. Playing in 86 first-class matches as a pastime, mostly for Hampshire, his fast bowling secured 339 wickets at twenty-two, though his batting drew comparisons with shovelling. He played country-house and weekend cricket with artistic and authorial cronies as well as some of the best amateur cricketers of the day. Around his cricket he fitted in a remarkably diverse range of activities. Giving up life in a solicitor’s office, he had a ‘gap year’ in Spain and Portugal when these were distant countries and went on to Morocco where he tried the local narcotic. His experiences set him on a lifetime of travelling. In Argentina he sought a giant sloth; in Haiti he discovered voodoo and found that ‘black ruled white’; in eastern Canada he visited the tundra and its migrating caribou. He wrote up his travels for newspapers, magazines and academic journals and drew on his findings to write, with his mother, pulp fiction – serialised in the days before broadcast media – whose popularity rivalled the mighty Conan Doyle. His concerns ‘triggered’ early conservation legislation. Twice decorated in the Great War, he did much to raise the effectiveness of Allied sniping to German standards. Simon Sweetman traces a life from near penury in infancy, via the Channel Islands, the pre-independence Dublin social ‘season’ and an unlikely marriage into the aristocracy, to its tragic end at 45.

"Papers taken from the ... second Visual Delights conference held at the University of Sheffield in 2002"--P. [4] of cover.