The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world’s first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since.

A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled. Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?

The Big Bow Mystery (1892) is a novel by Israel Zangwill. Although he is frequently recognized as a writer who focused on the plight of London’s Jewish community, Zangwill also wrote works of genre fiction. Originally serialized in The Star, The Big Bow Mystery is a satirical take on the locked room mystery that continues to astound, entertain, and frustrate readers to this day. Having risen through poverty to become an educator and author, Zangwill dedicated his career to the voiceless, the oppressed, and the needy, advocating for their rights and bearing witness to their suffering in some of the most powerful novels and stories of the Victorian era. On a foggy morning in a working-class neighborhood on the East End of London, a landlady rises to light the fire and make a pot of tea. Eventually, Mrs. Drabdump realizes that one of her tenants has overslept, and goes upstairs to wake him. Finding his room locked from the inside, she grows concerned and enlists the help of another tenant. Forcing open the door, they find the man—a prominent activist for worker’s rights—dead in his own bed. When the coroner’s report reveals that the man was neither murdered or killed by his own hand, an investigation is launched involving inept policemen, a major politician, and several strange characters whose peculiarities provide a darkly humorous tint to an otherwise brutal tale of death and urban decay. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Israel Zangwill’s The Big Bow Mystery is a classic of British literature reimagined for modern readers.

Breaking down her door in response to the sounds of a violent attack and a gunshot, Mademoiselle Stangerson's rescuers are appalled to find her dying on the floor, clubbed down by a large mutton bone. But in a room with a barred window and locked door, how could her assailant have entered and escaped undetected? While bewildered police officials from the Sûreté begin an exhaustive investigation, so too does a young newspaperman, Joseph Rouletabille, who will encounter more impossibilities before this case can be closed.

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a disappearing corpse, a supernatural theory, and a genuinely shocking finale.

“A tour de force of storytelling.” —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series “Jobb’s excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read.” —The New York Times Book Review ”When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals,” Sherlock Holmes observed during one of his most baffling investigations. “He has nerve and he has knowledge.” In the span of fifteen years, Dr. Thomas Neill Cream murdered as many as ten people in the United States, Britain, and Canada, a death toll with almost no precedent. Poison was his weapon of choice. Largely forgotten today, this villain was as brazen as the notorious Jack the Ripper. Structured around the doctor’s London murder trial in 1892, when he was finally brought to justice, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream exposes the blind trust given to medical practitioners, as well as the flawed detection methods, bungled investigations, corrupt officials, and stifling morality of Victorian society that allowed Dr. Cream to prey on vulnerable and desperate women, many of whom had turned to him for medical help. Dean Jobb transports readers to the late nineteenth century as Scotland Yard traces Dr. Cream’s life through Canada and Chicago and finally to London, where new investigative tools called forensics were just coming into use, even as most police departments still scoffed at using science to solve crimes. But then, most investigators could hardly imagine that serial killers existed—the term was unknown. As the Chicago Tribune wrote, Dr. Cream’s crimes marked the emergence of a new breed of killer: one who operated without motive or remorse, who “murdered simply for the sake of murder.” For fans of Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, all things Sherlock Holmes, or the podcast My Favorite Murder, The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream is an unforgettable true crime story from a master of the genre.