The Unusual Suspects
Classic Crime Tales of Locked Rooms, Gothic Suspense, Forensic Clues, and Golden Age DetectionBy Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Robert Barr, E. W. Hornung, John Kendrick Bangs, Melville Davisson Post, Victor L. Whitechurch, Anna Katharine Green, G. K. Chesterton, Ellis Parker Butler, Maurice Leblanc, R. Austin Freeman, A. E. W. Mason, Mary Roberts Rinehart
Length346h 42m
About this audiobook
The Unusual Suspects surveys the formative richness of crime and mystery fiction, bringing together tales of deduction, burglary, psychological suspense, courtroom intrigue, and comic misdirection. Its range extends from Gothic atmospherics and sensation-fiction revelations to the tightly patterned puzzles of the Golden Age, revealing how the genre continually tests the boundaries between evidence, concealment, and narrative surprise. Stories of impossible crimes, elusive thieves, suspicious inheritances, and apparently ordinary domestic spaces demonstrate the enduring versatility of the detective tale. The collection assembles influential British, American, and French practitioners whose careers helped establish the conventions of popular detective writing. Across Victorian sensation, late nineteenth-century Gothic fiction, Edwardian adventure, and interwar puzzle mysteries, these voices register changing attitudes toward urban modernity, professional policing, class, gender, and rational inquiry. Their varied investigators, criminals, and witnesses show that mystery fiction developed not as a single tradition but through an international conversation among competing forms of suspense, satire, and deduction. Recommended for devoted mystery readers, students, and scholars of popular literature, this volume offers an unusually broad encounter with the genre's early architecture. Reading its works together illuminates both familiar conventions and their inventive departures, while inviting comparison between styles, national traditions, and moral imaginaries. It is an educationally rewarding anthology whose diverse cases generate a lively dialogue about how fiction makes uncertainty intelligible.
Audiobook details
Rating★★★★ 3.9 (196)
Includes Goodreads, Amazon, LibraryThing, StoryGraph
GenreMystery and Thriller
Length346 hrs 42 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateJul 16, 2019
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Grey Mask (Annotated)
2The Unusual Suspects
3Edgar Allan Poe
4The Murders in the Rue Morgue
5The Mystery of Marie Roget
Show all chaptersShow less
6The Purloined Letter
7Agatha Christie
8The Mysterious Affair at Styles
9Chapter 1 I GO TO STYLES
10Chapter 2 THE 16TH AND 17TH OF JULY
11Chapter 3 THE NIGHT OF THE TRAGEDY
12Chapter 4 POIROT INVESTIGATES
13Chapter 5 “IT ISN’T STRYCHNINE, IS IT?”
14Chapter 6 THE INQUEST
15Chapter 7 POIROT PAYS HIS DEBTS
16Chapter 8 FRESH SUSPICIONS
17Chapter 9 DR. BAUERSTEIN
18Chapter 10 THE ARREST
19Chapter 11 THE CASE FOR THE PROSECUTION
20Chapter 12 THE LAST LINK
21Chapter 13 POIROT EXPLAINS
22The Murder on the Links
239. M. Giraud Finds Some Clues
2418. Giraud Acts
2528. Journey’s End
26The Kidnapped Prime Minister
27The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
28The Secret Adversary
29Prologue
30Chapter 1 The Young Adventurers, Ltd.
31Chapter 2 Mr. Whittington’s Offer
32Chapter 3 A Set Back
33Chapter 4 Who Is Jane Finn?
34Chapter 5 Mr. Julius P. Hersheimmer
35Chapter 6 A Plan of Campaign
36Chapter 7 The House in Soho
37Chapter 8 The Adventures of Tommy
38Chapter 9 Tuppence Enters Domestic Service
39Chapter 10 Enter Sir James Peel Edgerton
40Chapter 11 Julius Tells a Story
41Chapter 12 A Friend in Need
42Chapter 13 The Vigil
43Chapter 14 A Consultation
44Chapter 15 Tuppence Receives a Proposal
45Chapter 16 Further Adventures of Tommy
46Chapter 17 Annette
47Chapter 18 The Telegram
48Chapter 19 Jane Finn
49Chapter 20 Too Late
50Chapter 21 Tommy Makes a Discovery
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