The Lock and Key Library: Classic Mystery and Detective Stories: Modern English

About the book

This Modern English volume of Julian Hawthorne's Lock and Key Library brings together stories whose mysteries do not all belong to the same kind of explanation. Sherlock Holmes cases by Conan Doyle sit beside Kipling's tales of apparent supernatural activity, Stevenson's adventurous 'The Pavilion on the Links,' and Wilkie Collins's 'The Dream Woman.' Other selections extend the range through crime, concealment, and unexpected discoveries. The juxtaposition makes the collection useful for seeing how suspense can depend on a hidden fact, a mistaken interpretation, or uncertainty about the nature of an experience itself. It is an anthology rather than a single detective's sequence, and its changing voices invite readers to compare the different promises that a mysterious opening can make.

• Mystery and explanation
• Deceptive appearances
• Varieties of suspense

Why read it

Read it for the contrast between investigative puzzles and tales whose unease reaches beyond straightforward detection.

English anthology edited by Julian Hawthorne; Modern English volume