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

Before the paperback thriller, the mystery lived in the pages of magazines and story collections. The Lock and Key Library gathered the best of them into one long, satisfying shelf.

What it's about

The Lock and Key Library is a multi-volume anthology of classic mystery and detective stories, and this volume collects modern English tales in that tradition. It brings together stories of crime, detection, sensation and the uncanny by a range of authors, chosen to represent the pleasures of the form: the sealed puzzle, the clever deduction, the twist withheld until the last page.

Themes

The collection turns on mystery in all its varieties, the concealment and disclosure of secrets, the confrontation of order with transgression, and the reader's delight in being outwitted and then enlightened. Across its selections one can trace the conventions of detective fiction taking shape, from ingenious method to atmospheric dread.

Why it still matters

Anthologies like this preserved and popularised the short mystery at a formative period, keeping alive stories that might otherwise have been scattered and lost. For readers and scholars of crime fiction, the volume is a convenient window onto the genre's roots and its range before the twentieth-century detective boom.

Who it's for

Fans of vintage crime and detective fiction, readers who like a variety of authors in one volume, and anyone who enjoys a well-made short story to be read in a single sitting. Ideal bedside company.