The Best Crime Stories Ever Told

By: Dorothy L. Sayers - editor

Narrated by: Robin Bloodworth, Suehyla El Attar

When acclaimed mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers first began compiling anthologies of the best crime stories in the 1920s and ’30s, the genre was in the flush of its first golden age. While it is hard to imagine today - after every possible mystery plot has been told, retold, subverted, and played straight again by hundreds of writers over nearly a century - in Sayers’s day there were still twists that had never been seen, and machinations of crime that would shock even jaded Jazz Age fans.

Now today’s fans of mystery and crime can experience a handpicked collection of over thirty of the most outstanding stories from this era, originally chosen by Sayers and newly introduced by Otto Penzler, a leading expert and connoisseur in the field of mystery literature. As a prolific writer of the genre, Sayers understood the difficulty of putting together a mystery that was not only sufficiently challenging (so that the solution was not immediately obvious to the listener), but also solvable without forcing the writer to cheat. That balance between opacity and solvability remains the greatest challenge of writing great crime stories - and these are some of the greatest.

Authors appearing in this collection include:

• Edgar Allen Poe
• Herman Melville
• H. G. Wells
• Wilkie Collins
• Stephen Crane
• J. S. Le Fanu

©2012 Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. Introduction copyright © 2012 by Otto Penzler (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Majority supernatural suspense

The first half dozen stories do what it says on the box - mainly good crime fiction/mystery. All the rest are the uncanny and supernatural mystery and not at all the genre I was expecting.
The narrator is mainly acceptable, though fond of speaking in a stage whisper, but just forward past any with his absolutely execrable German accent. They’re not worth the pain of listening. I listened doggedly to the lot, trust me on this.

Confused

A bit confused. There are a few crime stories but most are supernatural stories. Definitely a British/Continental tilt to the story selection which helps bring out lesser known stories.

Lot of duds, some gems

If you like bobbing for apples when most are duds and the chance of getting a mouth full of mealy monster mush is guaranteed, you're ready to buy "Best Crime Stories" edited by Dorothy Sayers.

Most of these stories take place before crime writing came into its own. We get loads of gentlemen sleuths: pipe puffing know-it-alls who lack the quirky charm of Sherlock but like him steamroll over dumb cops to get the answers.

Then there are ghost stories, lots and lots. Speaking beyond the grave. Rattling the china. Scaring the horses. Edgar Allen Poe is not at his best here. He's trying out his themes of romantic loss and obsession without the crisp architecture of his best tales. The gems? Almost worth it for the Stephen Crane, the H.G. Wells and the Melville. That's about two good hours out of twenty. Is this a recommendation? Depends on how bored you're willing to be.

No complaints about the narrators.

Some real gems in this collection

I believe it was Theodore Sturgeon who said, “90% of everything is crap.” This collection has a far better ratio.

To be clear - only about 5 hours of 20 are classified as “Detection & Mystery.” The rest of the volume is “Mystery & Horror” and includes some thrillers, some wonderfully ambiguous psychological/supernatural stories, and quite a few unapologetic ghost stories.

There are some real gems here that I’ve rarely seen collected: The Open Boat by Stephen Crane is absolutely superb; Sredni Vashtar by Saki; The Great Return by Arthur Machen; The Bell Tower by Herman Melville; The Biter Bit by Wilkie Collins; The Ordinary Hairpins by E. C. Bentley; and the short and lively No. 17 by Mrs. E. Bland are all standouts.

There are some wobbles: the male narrator should have been less confident and more willing to check the pronunciation of several words. He also drifts into a kind of Irish-American-Australian accent that is as annoying as it is unidentifiable. However, both narrators do a wonderful job with character voices.

Overall, I enjoyed this collection and recommend it to others who enjoy mysteries from the 1800’s to early 1900’s.

Incompetent narration

These stories are good. But the male narrator makes a grotesque hash of the reading, wobbling between the gratingly false English and German accents, all tinged with Australian twang, while mispronouncing even words in English seemingly in every other sentence. His female counterpart similarly trips over common words, while substituting hysteria for feeling. You need ears of steel to listen to this farrago.