The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery
Friday, April 23, 2010
A reference for lovers of the mystery genre looks at mystery writers, famous and lesser known, in an A-to-Z format, and offers a cross-referenced catalog of titles, characters, and movie adaptations.
Review by a reader:
Most of us might anticipate an effort at objectivity in an encyclopedia. If those are your expectations, they would not be met by this work. In fact, the author appears to go out of his way to provide opinions where they might not normally be expected. For example, in the entry for Patricia Moyes, he comments, as if it is fact, that her main character Henry Tibbet "... falls into the tradition of Roderick Alleyn and Alan Grant, though he is less interesting... ". Whether Tibbett is more interesting or not clearly depends on each reader's outlook and, here, Mr. Murphy lets us know his.
The author's opinions here are quite interesting, although I would anticipate that most serious mystery readers will disagree with quite a few of them. Unfortunately, his bias seems to extend to excluding a number of popular and award winning authors, e.g., Steve Martini, Kate Wilhelm, whose work is even published by the same publisher, Earlene Fowler, etc.
In conclusion, this is a thick and extensive, albeit biased and exclusionary, work. Particularly, if supplemented by more inclusive mystery references this could make a useful addition to your library.
Buy this at Amazon: The Encyclopedia of Murder and Mystery
E-book link: http://www.4shared.com/document/GrrcTFF3/The_Encyclopedia_of_Murder_and.html?s=1
