Price: $15.00
Binding: Trade paperback
Trim size: 5" x 7-1/2"
Pages: 224
ISBN: 0-9625804-9-X

This is an original publication of The Crum Creek Press (2006)

Mystery Muses
100 Classics That Inspire Today's Mystery Writers
edited by Jim Huang & Austin Lugar

Anthony Award winner for Best Nonfiction of 2006!
Macavity Award winner for Best Nonfiction of 2006!

We asked 100 published writers:

Did a mystery set you on your path to being a writer?
Is there a classic mystery that remains important to you today?

This book, a follow-up to our two previous collections of essays, 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century (2000) and They Died in Vain: Overlooked, Underappreciated and Forgotten Mystery Novels (2002), is the result.

Download a preview (PDF)

An entertaining and indispensable bibliography for mystery fans.

-- Marilyn Dahl for Shelf Awareness

Works by past and present masters are celebrated in “Mystery Muses: 100 Classics That Inspire Today's Mystery Writers,” edited by Jim Huang and Austin Lugar. In this book an even 100 of today's genre-practitioners pay homage to works that were most meaningful to each -- from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado" (1843) to Dennis Lehane's "Gone, Baby, Gone" (1998). The best of these mini-essays -- such as Ed Gorman's on John Lutz's "Buyer Beware," Peter Lovesey's on Patricia Highsmith's "Strangers on a Train" and Jon L. Breen's on Helen McCloy's "Dance of Death" -- are as compelling as the works they describe.

-- Tom Nolan for The Wall Street Journal

This is another standout volume for mystery lovers who want to deepen their knowledge and appreciation of mystery as a genre. In it, 100 writers write about the books that inspired them to become writers themselves, and the essays are vivid and entertaining. Sure, there’s plenty of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Raymond Chandler titles covered, but there are lots of other gems, while Jeanne M. Dams’ essay on Gaudy Night may give you a fresh appreciation for it (and a desire to reread). Some other delights include Sandra Balzo’s moving essay on Ammie, Come Home by Barbara Michaels; Peter Lovesey’s essay on Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train - the influence is so clear! - and Michael Koryta’s loveletter to Dennis Lehane’s Gone, Baby Gone. Well worth it for the recommendations alone, and you’ll enjoy wending your way through it as it covers Poe to Lehane. A must for every serious mystery reader’s library.

-- Robin Agnew, Aunt Agatha's (top 10 of 2006 pick)

This small gem by the publisher that brought us 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century and They Died in Vain delighted me in so many ways. One hundred mystery writers were asked to write about the mystery books that inspired them. The resulting essays introduced me to a few authors I didn’t know and more than a few classics I haven’t read. The authors’ stories of literary inspiration fascinated me and allowed me to become better acquainted with some writers whom I knew only through their fiction. What I really loved though: time after time the essayists—many of them fresh from an education steeped in Great Literature—relate how they came to an epiphany about the literary possibilities of genre fiction after reading a mystery book.

-- Karen Spengler, I Love a Mystery

What inspires a mystery writer?

We asked 100 published writers: “Did a mystery set you on your path to being a writer? Is there a classic mystery that remains important to you today?” This book is the result.

The writers we contacted represent the entire spectrum of the mystery genre, from cozy to hardboiled, from acclaimed veterans to some of the field’s most intriguing newcomers.  Young or old, each of these writers reminds us of a basic truism: great writers are great readers first.  Their essays reveal the extent to which the discovery of these seminal texts was not just literary inspiration but a life-altering event.

We found it especially endearing to see how often contributors referred not just to a book’s text but to its literal form as well: a particular copy of a particular edition. We are reminded that the power of the printed word derives in part from the fact that it is printed and bound, fixed in both time and place.

In these essays, we’re also reminded of the power of the genre itself. For many writers, their classics represent more than just a bar against which to measure their own work, they inspired a new way to look at the landscape of literature.

These writers represent several generations of mystery lovers, and the classics they cite represent every era of the mystery story, from the 1840s to the 1990s. We’ve arranged these essays in the order of the publication of the classics they cover, from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of the Amontillado” to Dennis Lehane’s Gone, Baby, Gone. This chronological arrangement offers something of a history of the genre, and reveals that the virtues of early crime stories are not necessarily the same as what we admire in more recent work.

It’s striking how many of the classics covered are newer. Fifty essays cover books published in 1952 and earlier. Fifty essays cover books published since 1954.  Can a book that’s just 25 years old be considered a classic? Just 10 years old? Our position is simple: just because a book was published recently doesn’t mean it didn’t influence someone. The power of a story doesn’t derive from its age; it’s in the story itself, and its reader.

If genre truly is “a conversation among texts,” as science fiction editor David Hartwell has written, we hope that Mystery Muses will become part of the conversation. These essays are not just about 100 beloved books. They are just as much about 100 of the genre’s finest current practitioners, writers who respect the past and who continue to be inspired by classics as they define the future of the mystery story.

Contributors and their subjects

Rob Kantner on "The Cask of the Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

Karen Harper on "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (1846)

Nancy Means Wright on The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868)

David Thurlo on "The Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892)

Donna Andrews on The Red Thumb Mark by R. Austin Freeman (1907)

Michael Lister on The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton (1911)

Betty Webb on The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie (1920)

Kerry Greenwood on The Three Hostages by John Buchan (1924)

Valerie Wolzien on The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (1926)

Ted Hertel, Jr. on The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon (1927)

Sharan Newman on The Poet and the Lunatics by G.K. Chesterton (1929)

Jan Burke on Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (1929)

Dean James on Mystery Mile by Margery Allingham (1930)

Katherine Hall Page on Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie (1930)

Aaron Elkins on The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (1930)

Michael A. Black on The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (1930)

Kate Flora on Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers (1930)

Mark Richard Zubro on Freddy the Detective by Walter R. Brooks (1932)

Margaret Maron on Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers (1932)

P.M. Carlson on The Fear Sign by Margery Allingham (1933)

Elaine Viets on The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Carolyn Keene (1933)

Sharon Fiffer on Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933)

Laura Lippman on The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain (1934)

Barbara D'Amato on Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (1934)

Edward Hoch on The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen (1934)

Sally Wright on The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers (1934)

Gillian Roberts on Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout (1934)

Dick Lochte on The Saint in New York by Leslie Charteris (1935)

Parnell Hall on The Case of the Counterfeit Eye by Erle Stanley Gardner (1935)

Jeanne M. Dams on Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (1935)

Valerie S. Malmont on The Burning Court by John Dickson Carr (1937)

Roberta Gellis on Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers (1937)

Linda Fairstein on Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)

Nicholas Kilmer on Lament for a Maker by Michael Innes (1938)

Jon L. Breen on Dance of Death by Helen McCloy (1938)

Lyn Hamilton on The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (1939)

William Kent Krueger on The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (1939)

Tony Perona on And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (1939)

Nancy Pickard on Double Indemnity by James M. Cain (1944)

Carole Nelson Douglas on Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey (1946)

Hazel Holt on The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (1948)

Carolyn Wheat on Cat of Many Tails by Ellery Queen (1949)

Carola Dunn on Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey (1949)

K.j.a. Wishnia on Trouble is My Business by Raymond Chandler (1950)

Jeffrey Marks on A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie (1950)

Peter Lovesey on Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (1950)

Susan Oleksiw on They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie (1951)

Bill Crider on The Big Kill by Mickey Spillane (1951)

Candace Robb on The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey (1951)

Stephanie Kane on The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (1952)

Mary Anna Evans on The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (1954)

Terence Faherty on The Beckoning Lady by Margery Allingham (1955)

Ann Granger on Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh (1955)

Carl Brookins on Strip for Murder by Richard S. Prather (1955)

Marcia Talley on The Door Into Summer by Robert Heinlein (1957)

Roberta Isleib on The Pink Motel by Carol Ryrie Brink (1959)

Philip R. Craig on Watcher in the Shadows by Geoffrey Household (1960)

JoAnna Carl on Death and the Joyful Woman by Ellis Peters (1961)

Eileen Dreyer on The Ivy Tree by Mary Stewart (1961)

Kit Ehrman on Dead Cert by Dick Francis (1962)

Monette Michaels on The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart (1962)

Michael Jecks on The Night of the Generals by H.H. Kirst (1963)

Sharon Short on Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (1964)

Dick Cady on The Chill by Ross MacDonald (1964)

Gary D. Phillips on Pop. 1280 by Jim Thompson (1964)

Michael Allen Dymmoch on Odds Against by Dick Francis (1965)

Sam Hill on Darker Than Amber by John D. MacDonald (1966)

Jeffrey Cohen on Secret Agents Four by Donald J. Sobol (1967)

Judith Skillings on The Photogenic Soprano by Dorothy Dunnett (1968)

Sandra Balzo on Ammie, Come Home by Barbara Michaels (1968)

Mary Welk on Murder to Go by Emma Lathen (1969)

Michael Z. Lewin on The Goodbye Look by Ross Macdonald (1969)

Rhys Bowen on The Blessing Way by Tony Hillerman (1970)

Zoë Sharp on The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (1971)

Frankie Y. Bailey on Murder in the Walls by Richard Martin Stern (1971)

Sarah Stewart Taylor on An Unsuitable Job for a Woman by P.D. James (1972)

Jeremiah Healy on The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker (1973)

John Lescroart on The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders (1973)

Dan Fesperman on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré (1974)

Sandra Tooley on Salem's Lot by Stephen King (1975)

Ed Gorman on Buyer Beware by John Lutz (1976)

M.J. Rose on A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell (1977)

Joanne Pence on Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs (1978)

Elizabeth Gunn on The Empty Copper Sea by John D. MacDonald (1978)

J.A. Konrath on The Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker (1978)

Toni L.P. Kelner on The Tightrope Walker by Dorothy Gilman (1979)

Beverle Graves Myers on The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (1983)

Libby Fischer Hellmann on Briarpatch by Ross Thomas (1984)

Julie A. Hyzy on C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton (1986)

Jan Brogan on Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (1987)

Colin Cotterill on The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988)

Phil Dunlap on A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman (1988)

Harley Jane Kozak on The Eight by Katherine Neville (1988)

Carolyn Haines on Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke (1989)

Tim Cockey on Time's Witness by Michael Malone (1989)

Twist Phelan on Bootlegger's Daughter by Margaret Maron (1992)

Lea Wait on She Walks These Hills by Sharyn McCrumb (1994)

Larry D. Sweazy on Breakheart Hill by Thomas Cook (1995)

Pari Noskin Taichert on What's the Worst That Could Happen? by Donald E. Westlake (1996)

Michael Koryta on Gone, Baby, Gone by Dennis Lehane (1998)