Test your own powers of deduction alongside those of the most celebrated detective ever to walk the streets of London or grace the pages of a book. Sherlock Holmes brings his extraordinary insight and intriguing quirks to every case he is called upon to solve — sometimes without even leaving the comfort of his Baker Street apartment. In this collection of 23 ingeniously plotted stories, no case is too big, too small, or too bizarre for Holmes. Whether he is foiling the grand schemes of a would-be bank robber or uncovering family secrets kept hidden away for years, Sherlock Holmes at all times proves himself a formidable adversary. With his trusted and always-admiring friend, Dr. Watson, at his side, “the most perfect reasoning and observing machine the world has ever seen” uses his unique analytical gifts to confound every criminal and unravel every mystery.

In this thrilling, ingeniously plotted mystery, Rex Stout relates another adventure of the detective he introduced in DOUBLE FOR DEATH. Tecumseh Fox lives in a big place out near Brewster, New York, and he grows things there. But he’s interested in other things besides detecting and gardening so he gave some money toward the purchase of a fine violin for a promising young violinist named Jan Tusar.Fox was in the audience the night of Tusar’s debut and, although he didn’t know much about music, it didn’t seem to him that the performance was much good.

Ранее не издававшийся рассказ Агаты Кристи из книги Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mysteries in the Making — Includes Two Unpublished Poirot Stories.В составе книги примечания редактора и предисловие.Книга на английском языке.

The Adventure of the Illustrious ClientThe Adventure of the Blanched SoldierThe Adventure of the Mazarin StoneThe Adventure of the Three GablesThe Adventure of the Sussex VampireThe Adventure of the Three GarridebsThe Problem of Thor BridgeThe Adventure of the Creeping ManThe Adventure of the Lion's ManeThe Adventure of the Veiled LodgerThe Adventure of Shoscombe Old PlaceThe Adventure of the Retired Colorman

Erle Stanley Gardner turns to a hair-raising tale about the hero of “Murder Up My Sleeve” — quiet, amazingly perceptive Terry Clane, who bids fair to rank with those other two favorites, Perry Mason and Doug Selby...

Terry Clane, just back from China where he has been working on a secret government mission, runs into murder when he walks down the gangway at San Francisco. Whisked straight from the dock to police headquarters, Terry puts to good use all the powers of intense concentration he has learned in the Orient in order to beat the lie detector with its uncanny mind-reading.

Terry quickly senses that despite his absence the police think he knows too much about the escape of a man convicted of murder. The fugitive has disappeared and Cynthia Renton, original, impetuous painter who was once Terry’s fiancée, has disappear too. Was Cynthia implicated in the escape? Where would she hide a fugitive from justice?

Terry’s mind flew to Sou Ha, the sparkling vivacious daughter of his wisest Chinese friend, in her hidden, luxurious home in San Francisco’s Chinatown. How far would Sou Ha’s loyalty to Terry take her?

Sight of the old Chinese figure of Chow Kok Koh, riding backward on his white mule, sent the lie detector needles shooting up. Terry had given that figure to Cynthia. What was it doing now, stained with blood, a clue in a brutal murder?

A plot that never lets down from beginning to end, human and fascinating characters, a Story told with authentic punch, all prove that the maestro has done it again. From the appointment in the lonely warehouse to the explosive climax, it’s top mystery fare.

It was beautiful bait: two lovely thousand-dollar bills and a torn half of a ten-thousand-dollar note. Perry Mason swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.They had gone to a lot of trouble. They had Mason’s private number, woke him up and persuaded him to meet them at his office in the middle of the night. There he found a man and a girl; a man who knew exactly what he wanted but wouldn’t explain; a girl who wore a man’s overcoat, a mask — and wouldn’t speak. It was the girl who kept the other half of the ten-grand note. When and if they needed Perry Mason he’d get her half. Not until then would he know who his client was. Perry suspected he was being played for a sucker, but he was too interested to swim away.The next morning, he felt the hook. It was murder, a murder obviously linked to his mysterious visitors. And the barb on the hook was that Perry couldn’t discover who his client was or what he was supposed to do. Della Street’s mocking jibes were hard to take.A racing Gardner story full of action, suspense and one of the most original plots Gardner has ever created.

“I count eight,” said Perry Mason, meaning brunettes.They were almost identical brunettes, at that, all standing at consecutive corners on the south side of the street, and they added up to such a beautiful dark mystery that even Perry Mason, famous connoisseur of fine murders that he is, was so fascinated he almost began a new career — behind bars.Mathematically Eva Martell was perfect: her height was five feet four and one-half inches, her weight one hundred and eleven, her waist twenty-four, her bust thirty-two.Because of these dimensions, curiously enough, she attracted dead bodies... She has also attracted one of Gardner’s top voltage plots, the kind that keeps Perry Mason and Della Street sizzling around in bizarre clues, counter clues and extra-legal activities. The kind that keeps Gardner readers up till dawn convinced that at last they are going to out-mastermind him.Gardner knows how to make his characters come to life. He also knows how to kill them off under completely baffling circumstances. He doesn’t believe in tricking his readers; it might be dangerous. So he gives you all the evidence with machine- gun rapidity — and lets you trick yourself. Even the most successful lawyers and criminologists come to a bad end the minute they tangle with a Gardner plot. Which is what makes him so successful.With this thought in mind we leave you, on the brink of one more Perry Mason mystery that anyone can figure out — wrong.

Mason (with Della Street and Paul Drake, of course) takes on a super-baffling case involving — among other strange things—

A shattering car wreck in which apparently no one was injured...

A glamorous widow who should have had a husband but didn’t...

An alarm clock that ticked away cheerfully under ground...

A bank clerk who boasted brazenly about a $90,000 embezzlement...

A girl who was always on hand when Perry Mason wanted her miles away, but was always missing when he needed her most...

A client on trial for murder who wouldn’t even talk to Mason...

A blood-stained bullet about which there was something very phoney...

A photographer who could make a camera do everything but climb a tree...

A gold mine without any gold...

AND, last but not least — Perry Mason, all but hoist with his own petard.

A Perry Mason Mystery... featuring the famous lawyer-detective in a bewildering case. Not one but TWO courtroom sessions — each with a different defendant — make this one of the most intriguing novels Erle Stanley Gardner has yet created.

It all begins with a minor automobile accident featuring a building contractor and a glamorous photographer’s model.

From then on it is a matter of snap decisions, snap judgments, and some telling snap-shots — one of them candid, and one of them fatal.

When Mason gets in the act, Hamilton Burger figures the D.A.’s office can make a killing of its own — and bring in Mason’s head on a platter!

Start on page one, play it to win, and you’ll be in on one of the most fabulous photo-finishes of Perry Mason’s career.

Two poisonings and two shootings at the Shore mansion on the thirteenth of October are no mere coincidence. Nor is the presence, in the neighborhood, of that celebrated man-about-murder, Perry Mason.

Warned by the local police to stay off the Shore case, Mason refuses to do so Result? His secretary, Della Street, is indicted on a charge of hiding a witness. And Mason is held as her accessory!

Watch the Mighty Mason extricate himself from this legal noose while solving the Shore mystery with his usual finesse.

In this novelette Perry Mason clears his client, despite damning evidence in the victim’s lovenest, through the lipstick kiss impression on the dead man’s forehead.

Arthur Bickler was mad. The truck marked Skinner Hills Karakul Company was responsible for the accident. What’s more, the driver unceremoniously had snatched away his notebook in which he had written down the license number of the truck. He certainly thought he was entitled to $750 damages. Jackson thought he might get $500. Perry Mason compromised for $2000... He smelled more than sheep in them that hills...

The first person Perry Mason ferreted out was Daphne Milfield, obviously a blonde bomber in spire of the swollen eyes. Then there was suave Harry Van Nuys — a bit too solicitous about his friend’s wife. And Carol Burbank, a streamlined beauty who knew she had brains — and used them.

From then on it’s a matter of ships and shoes and candlewax — and for a time Della Street, paul Drake, and Perry mason wished they had left their clothes on the hickory limb and not gone near the water...

In this novelette Perry Mason solves the case of the death of a blackmailer and the disappearance of an amnesiac wife.

A recipe to delight every gourmet of mystery fiction...

Take a proxy fight and a series of mysterious phone calls from an unknown female who said her name was Rosalind.

Add a couple of guns and a very dead blonde in a bare hotel room.

Season with Perry Mason’s brilliant analytical mind... and some fast action by Della Street and Paul Drake.

Pop it all into the courtroom... and you will have a murder case that is almost too hot to handle. At least that is the way Hamilton Burger, the district attorney, felt about it.

It’s a sensational pièce de résistance that calls for whirlwind action by three of the best cooks in the business, Perry Mason, Della Street, and Paul Drake.

The team of Mason. Street and Drake was never in better form.

Perry Mason and Della Street were both out to lunch. Gertie, the receptionist and telephone operator, was indulging in her favorite noontime occupation munching chocolates and reading a love store — when the door burst open and a woman rushed in.

Gertie got her name, all right, dimly registered the fact that she was not only very attractive but very upset at having to wait for Mason, and Gertie even looked up when the woman left before he returned.

But vicarious romance was the rule of that day — much to the annoyance of Lt. Tragg when he later tried to piece together what had happened. And although his plan for surprising Gertie into an identification of the lady was ingenious, Perry’s counter-measure was even more so...

Perry Mason has cause to ponder the old adage “Like Father, like son” in this explosive drama of murder among California’s upper crust... featuring a small boy ho just loves guns — preferably those that go Bang!

The curtain rises on Mervin Selkirk’s scandalous divorce. Then, with the battle for custody of seven-year-old Robert still pending, Selkirk’s fiancée, Norda Allison, learns of some unfortunate qualities in her intended. Exit romance; enter letters — crude, threatening ones addressed to Norda.

That’s when Selkirk’s ex-wife and her second husband come on stage, his powerful father lurks behind scenes, and Perry Mason makes his entrance as star in a daring — and deadly — role.