La inoportuna desaparición de un Stradivarius, regalo del emperador Pedro II a su amante, y varias orejas cortadas, con sus respectivos cadáveres, deciden al célebre detective Sherlock Holmes y a su inseparable doctor Watson a desplazarse a Brasil, por recomendación de su no menos famosa amiga la actriz Sarah Bernhardt, que triunfa en la capital americana. Pero lo que en un principio parecía un discreto problema imperial termina convirtiéndose en una historia llena de peligros. En esta sorprendente novela de Jô Soares, su rigurosa investigación histórica y su desbordada imaginación se dan cita para acercarnos, mediante la delirante comicidad de sus diálogos, a las modas y costumbres de la capital brasileña del siglo pasado y para revelarnos las peripecias que Holmes vivió en Río de Janeiro y que Conan Doyle omitió por motivos que quedarán bastante claros a los ojos del lector.

Quirke – the hard-drinking, insatiably curious Dublin pathologist – is back, and he's determined to find his daughter's best friend, a well-connected young doctor

April Latimer has vanished. A junior doctor at a local hospital, she is something of a scandal in the conservative and highly patriarchal society of 1950s Dublin. Though her family is one of the most respected in the city, she is known for being independent-minded; her taste in men, for instance, is decidedly unconventional.

Now April has disappeared, and her friend Phoebe Griffin suspects the worst. Frantic, Phoebe seeks out Quirke, her brilliant but erratic father, and asks him for help. Sober again after intensive treatment for alcoholism, Quirke enlists his old sparring partner, Detective Inspector Hackett, in the search for the missing young woman. In their separate ways the two men follow April's trail through some of the darker byways of the city to uncover crucial information on her whereabouts. And as Quirke becomes deeply involved in April's murky story, he encounters complicated and ugly truths about family savagery, Catholic ruthlessness, and race hatred.

Both an absorbing crime novel and a brilliant portrait of the difficult and relentless love between a father and his daughter, this is Benjamin Black at his sparkling best.

No suspense collection is complete without this anthology. Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the stories in this volume represent many of the biggest names in detective and suspense fiction: Ellery Queen, Harold Q. Masur, Celia Fremlin, Jack Ritchie, Patricia Highsmith and Bill Pronzini are only a few of the prize-winning authors in this amazing volume.

a book to remember...

In this book you will investigate crime with such Famous Detectives as

Perry Mason

Nero Wolfe

Ellery Queen

and read stories of detection and suspense by such Famous Mystery Writers as

Agatha Christie

John Dickson Carr

George Harmon Coxe

Charlotte Armstrong

Hugh Pentecost

and be surprised at tales of mystery and crime by such Famous Literary Figures as

W. Somerset Maugham

Ben Hecht,

John Van Druten

A book to remember, a book to read and reread — a book to treasure and keep permanently in your library...

For just over fifty years, Ellery Queen has dominated the American detective and mystery story scene. His annual collections of short and not-so-short stories by the cream of writers in the field have appeared for nearly forty of those years.

Including a complete short novel by Erle Stanley Gardner, The Clue of the Screaming Woman, and seventeen novelettes and short stories by masters of mystery Robert Bloch, Hugh Pentecost, Victor Canning, Lloyd Biggie, Jr. and Ellery Queen himself, amongst many others.

This volume is the nineteenth annual collection of the best stories from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Every year since the anthology’s inception, it has been acknowledged No. 1 in its field, and this current one is no exception.

The stories here range from pure detection to suspense, horror and psychological grue. Regardless of the reader’s taste, he will find a fulfilling and diverting repast offered by these writers:

John D. MacDonald, James M. Ullman, L. E. Behney, Michael Gilbert, George Sumner Albee, Helen Nielsen, Roy Vickers, Borden Deal, Fletcher Flora, Avram Davidson, William O’Farrell, Norman Daniels, Hugh Pentecost, Victor Canning, Helen McCloy, John Reese, Holly Roth, Edward D. Hoch, Gerald Kersh, Fred A. Rodewald & J. F. Peirce, Lawrence Treat, Stanley Ellin.