This book is a selection of the greatest crime stories ever written. The stories span more than a hundred years of crime fiction writing and feature a wide variety of heroes, heroines, villains, settings, story types and stylistic approaches. The selection demonstrates how the mystery story has evolved over a century, and how authors have kept it fresh through their ingenuity and thematic variations. The stories also reflect the times in which they were written so that they can be enjoyed from a historical perspective as well as pure entertainment. Ed McBain’s The Storm is a great way to start!