What an interesting, helpful and unusual book! A well‐written and readable guide for librarians on creating and running a mystery/crime collection. Mystery aficionados, editors and writers would find this book of value too. Wide ranging and comprehensive, the book covers such intriguing areas as “African‐American mysteries” by Connie Van Fleet and Rhonda Harris Taylor on “The Native‐American detective”. Victoria Hill writes a lucid account of the Arthur Conan Doyle collection held in the Toronto Public Library, with good linkage across to other Sherlockian collections worldwide. Good up‐to‐date coverage of bibliographic sources and internet sites dealing with crime and mystery writing adds to the impact of this book.
Marlynn Robinson and Rhonda Hawkins' excellent account of “the legal thriller” and the University of Texas School of Law's “Law in popular culture” collection of 4,000 legal mysteries and movies with a legal thriller theme is absorbing. Defining “legal thriller” should be easy but, in practice, many crime writers cross genres, e.g. Geoffrey Deaver, James Ellroy and Patricia Cornwell, and this can pose difficulties in collection building and development. Other particularly notable articles are those by Elizabeth Arneth on developing a Mystery Book Discussion Group and Kathy Harig's on “Sisters in crime (SinC)”, devoted to promoting mysteries written by women authors.
The thriller writer, Barbara Fister, writes a good introductory article outlining how mystery writers research their stories and the uses they make of librarians and libraries. Facts have to be “spot on” – the avid fan soon knows whether a “police procedural” (a la Ed McBain) or a “forensic thriller” (e.g. Kathy Reichs) has been researched thoroughly and accurately. So, notwithstanding the American bias, this is an interesting and useful book for librarians, particularly those concerned with collection building and exploitation. The book contains good bibliographies and very useful sources of supply and relevant web sites.
