The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries is another well curated anthology of classic Victorian crime short fiction edited by Otto Penzler. Released 19th Oct 2021 by Penguin Random House on their Vintage Crime / Black Lizard imprint, it's 640 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
This is an eclectic and broad collection of stories from disparate authors both famous and lesser known from the Victorian era. The stories are grouped roughly thematically: Detective Stories, Crime Stories, International Stories, and American Stories. There are (by my count) 49 stories from a varied stable of authors which includes Oscar Wilde, Poe, Doyle, H.G. Wells, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and other titans of English literature. Some of the stories will be familiar to most readers (The Lady, or the Tiger and The Purloined Letter make an appearance) but there were many which were delightfully unfamiliar to me.
As always, Mr Penzler's erudite introductions and background history are one of my main delights with these collections - there are more than a dozen such at this point. I enjoyed quite a lot of these and even enjoyed reading a few of them aloud together (fun road trip activity, passengers read, drivers drives:).
Four and a half stars. Diverting and worthwhile. This would be also be a superb choice for library acquisition, gifting or the home library.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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