Early in his career, Judge Dee visits a senior magistrate who shows him a beautiful lacquer screen on which a scene of lovers has been mysteriously altered to show the man stabbing his lover. The magistrate fears he is losing his mind and will murder his own wife. Meanwhile, a banker has inexplicably killed himself, and a lovely lady has allowed Dee's lieutenant, Chiao Tai, to believe she is a courtesan. Dee and Chiao Tai go incognito among a gang of robbers to solve this mystery, and find the leader of the robbers is more honorable than the magistrate.

"One of the most satisfyingly devious of the Judge Dee novels, with unusual historical richness in its portrayal of the China of the T'ang dynasty."-—New York Times Book Review

"Even Judge Dee is baffled by Robert van Gulik's new mysteries in The Lacquer Screen. Disguised as a petty crook, he spends a couple of precarious days in the headquarters of the underworld, hobnobbing with the robber king. Dee's lively thieving friends furnish some vital clues to this strange and fascinating jigsaw."-—The Spectator

"So scrupulously in the classic Chinese manner yet so nicely equipped with everything to satisfy the modern reader."-—New York Times

Robert Van Gulik (1910-67) was a Dutch diplomat and an authority on Chinese history and culture. He drew his plots from the whole body of Chinese literature, especially from the popular detective novels that first appeared in the seventeenth century.

Private Detective James Brampton's Casebook

A welcome link to the chain connecting the early masters of detective fiction.... The collection offers a window into the early days of American detective fiction and the power of deductive thinking."—Sarah Weinman, Los Angeles Times

"This story collection featuring New York City private detective James Brampton will intrigue Sherlock Holmes fans, given the number of eerie parallels between the two characters."—Publishers Weekly

"It is the observation of small things that makes a good detective, for it is often the most trivial circumstance which supplies the first link in the chain." —James Brampton

Twenty years before the Sherlock Holmes mysteries were written, a fictional New York private investigator was celebrated for his ability to solve crimes based on the principles of observation and deductive reasoning that later became Holmes' hallmark. Originally published in 1864 and never before reprinted, Leaves from the Note-Book of a New York Detective features twenty-nine cases of James Brampton, the first American detective hero to appear in fiction. The book opens with a chance meeting between a medical doctor, John Babbington Williams (the actual author of the stories), and detective James Brampton. They become acquaintances, and after Brampton has retired after twenty years of service, he sends his case notebooks to Dr. Williams to be edited and published. The result is a stunning collection of intriguing mysteries, including "The Defrauded Heir," "The Phantom Face," "A Satanic Compact," and "The Walker Street Tragedy." In case after case, using his power of observation, detective Brampton is able prove the innocence of the wrongly accused. Never before reprinted, this first modern edition of this important work now takes its place once more in the development of detective fiction between Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle, the casebook of the original American detective hero.

“I’m in a business where people come to me with troubles. Big troubles, little troubles, but always troubles they don’t want to take to the cops.” That’s Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, succinctly setting out our image of the private eye. A no-nonsense loner, working on the margins of society, working in the darkness to shine a little light.
 
The reality is a little different—but no less fascinating. In The Legendary Detective, John Walton offers a sweeping history of the American private detective in reality and myth, from the earliest agencies to the hard-boiled heights of the 1930s and ’40s. Drawing on previously untapped archival accounts of actual detective work, Walton traces both the growth of major private detective agencies like Pinkerton, which became powerful bulwarks against social and labor unrest, and the motley, unglamorous work of small-time operatives. He then goes on to show us how writers like Dashiell Hammett and editors of sensational pulp magazines like Black Mask embellished on actual experiences and fashioned an image of the PI as a compelling, even admirable, necessary evil, doing society’s dirty work while adhering to a self-imposed moral code. Scandals, public investigations, and regulations brought the boom years of private agencies to an end in the late 1930s, Walton explains, in the process fully cementing the shift from reality to fantasy.
 
Today, as the private detective has long since given way to security services and armed guards, the myth of the lone PI remains as potent as ever. No fan of crime fiction or American history will want to miss The Legendary Detective.

Donald E. Westlake is one of the greats of crime fiction. Under the pseudonym Richard Stark, he wrote twenty-four fast-paced, hardboiled novels featuring Parker, a shrewd career criminal with a talent for heists. Using the same nom de plume, Westlake also completed a separate series in the Parker universe, starring Alan Grofield, an occasional colleague of Parker. While he shares events and characters with several Parker novels, Grofield is less calculating and more hot-blooded than Parker; think fewer guns, more dames.

 

Not that there isn’t violence and adventure aplenty. Available as an e-book–only edition, Lemons Never Lie—a taut thriller that finds Grofield recruited by a man named Myers for a sketchy brewery heist. But when Grofield gets cold feet, he has to decide if it’s riskier to go through with the plot, or to say no to Myers.

 

With a new foreword by Sarah Weinman that situates the Grofield series within Westlake’s work as a whole, these novels are an exciting addition to any crime fiction fan’s library.