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bob_muller's review against another edition
3.0
I found the Philo Vance and Ellery Queen novels nearly unreadable in this volume. Hammett's Red Harvest is far and away the best, though I was pleasantly surprised by Little Caesar, and the Charlie Chan novel is very decent reading. There are several problems with the book, though. First, too many typos--did anyone proofread? More substantively, there are so many missed opportunities for annotations that it feels like Klinger only put in a half-hearted effort on this one. The introduction provides a decent history of mystery fiction, though with less emphasis on the 20s than on earlier fiction. I am not a scholar of 20s fiction, so I can't say whether the choice of novels resulted in the best of the 20s, but I came away with less than I expected from this tome. The Ellery Queen novel in particular was unreadable and took up a seemingly enormous amount of undeserved space!
It must also be mentioned that, to his credit, Klinger provides the original, unedited texts. The result, however, is so racist, homophobic, and jarringly bigoted that it may offend the sensibilities of many modern readers. That said, reading these novels tells you what America was like in the 20s as only undiluted and unedited popular fiction can.
It must also be mentioned that, to his credit, Klinger provides the original, unedited texts. The result, however, is so racist, homophobic, and jarringly bigoted that it may offend the sensibilities of many modern readers. That said, reading these novels tells you what America was like in the 20s as only undiluted and unedited popular fiction can.
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