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Titles to look out for:
[in alphabetical order of title; date given is that of first edition; later editions are included in each listing]
1959. Best Detective Stories. Edited by Edmund Crispin
1974. London Mystery Selection. No. 101
1936. The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries edited by J. M. Parrish and John R. Crossland
1959. Ten Great Mysteries: 2 Full Length Novels; 3 Novelettes; 5 Short Stories

• Best Detective Stories [top]
  Edited, with an introduction by Edmund Crispin
  First published in 1959 in Great Britain by Faber & Faber in paperback, 287pp, No ISBN (not used at that time)
  Original UK retail price when published: 5s. net (five shillings)

Contents:
Introduction
Dead Man's Shoes by Michael Innes
The Burnt Tout by H. C. Bailey
The Gentleman From Paris by John Dickson Carr
The Rubber Trumpet by Roy Vickers
The Dauphin's Doll by Ellery Queen
Who Killed Baker? by Edmund Crispin and Geoffrey Bush
You Can't Hang Twice by Anthony Gilbert
The Nine-Mile Walk by Harry Kemelman
A Dog in the Daytime by Rex Stout
The Enemy by Charlotte Armstrong

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• Ten Great Mysteries: 2 Full-Length Novels; 3 Novelettes; 5 Short Stories [top]
  Edited by Howard Haycraft and John Beecrof
  First published in 1959 in the United States by Doubleday & Co., Inc., in hardback with dustjacket, 640pp, no ISBN. Jacket design by Sydney Butchkes
  Some of these stories are currently scarce and difficult to get hold of, notably William Irish's 'The Dancing Detective'.

Contents:
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
The Learned Adventure of the Dragon's Head by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Case of the Crying Swallow by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Witness for the Prosecution by Agatha Christie
The Adventure of the President's Half Disme by Ellery Queen
The Case of the Late Pig by Margery Allingham
No Motive by Daphne Du Maurier
Die Like A Dog by Rex Stout
The Dancing Detective by William Irish
The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

In putting this compilation together, the editors selected what they felt to be a balanced menu of ten stories: long, short and medium, which have the common denominator of being of high quality.

The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett) has been called the most influential detective story of the 20th Century and has been imitated on multiple occasions, being what some people would term term one of the best performers of the American hardboiled detective story. The story has of course also been made into a film featuring Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre as Spade, Gutman, and Joel Cairo.

Quite far removed from Hammett (on the surface) is Dorothy L. Sayers, writer of 'The Learned Adventure' and creator of Lord Peter Wimsey. This particular offering reveals the author and her titled detective in one of their lighter moods and problems.

Erle Stanley Gardner's 'The Case of the Crying Swallow' is one of the best, but least known adventures of the famous California lawyer-sleuth; this title is currently difficult to find on its own at an inexpensive price.

'The Witness for the Prosecution' by Agatha Christie is the story upon which the most highly praised of her plays was based (she at one point had four plays running simultaneously in London and New York in a single season). This story also became an outstanding motion picture.

Ellery Queen is the product of two cousins Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee, who wrote novels and short stories about Ellery Queen the detective from 1929 onwards. In their spare time they edited 'Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'. In 'The Adventure of the President's Half Disme', a now very rare and very difficult to find story, Ellery pits his wits against the Father of his Country.

More information about the wonderful story from Margery Allingham: 'The Case of the Late Pig', where her famous detective Albert Campion gets an anonymous note to say that Pig Peters, his chum at Botolph's Abbey School, is dead can be found on the Margery Allingham page. Needless to say the death of Pig Peters is not quite as it seems...

Daphne du Maurier is principally known for straight fiction; however 'Rebecca' is clearly a great mystery classic; and 'No Motive', the story included in this compilation, is also one of her finest and most compassionate tales and a detective story in the truest sense of the word.

Rex Stout received the coveted title of "Grand Master" from the Mystery Writers of America in 1959 and "Die Like a Dog" tells what happens when a handsome canine specimen decides to adopt Nero and Archie, with unfortunate results for a callous killer. The story appeared in the rare omnibus volume Royal Flush (Viking 1965). The book contains three stories that first appeared in The American Magazine:
"The Next Witness" (May 1955, as "The Last Witness")
"When a Man Murders..." (May 1954)
"Die Like a Dog" (December 1954, as "The Body in the Hall")
Each story in this collection features a witness, not to a murder but to the events leading to it.

The compilation was published at a time when the suspense story was becoming more prevalent; the one significant development [at that time] since the hardboiled novel. William Irish (also known as Cornell Woolrich) was a master of this genre at the time and 'The Dancing Detective' is one of his most representative and powerful stories.

And finishing on a classic, masterful story (readers should also try 'The Daughter of Time'), 'The Franchise Affair' is a stunning modern-dress reconstruction of the historic real-life Elizabeth Canning case (an English maidservant who claimed she had been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft, before escaping almost a month later)