Here’s another shelf of non-fiction / reference volumes which are related to mystery subjects. Actually, this is just half the shelf, I’ll have the other half next week. I love these kind of books.
Starting on the left:
- The Fine Art of Murder subtitled “The Mystery Reader’s Indispensable Companion”, edited by Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg, Larry Segriff with Jon L. Breen (Carroll & Graf, 1993). Chock full of articles and essays covering the entire American and British mystery field.
- The American Traditional Mystery by Mark Lachman. Marvin is an enlightened expert on the subject. This reads like a textbook.
- The Mystery Lover’s Companion by Art Bougeau, subtitled “Over 2,500 mysteries, detective Stories, and suspense thrillers described and rated for aficionados”. Arranged by author.
- Encyclopedia Mysteriosa by William L. DeAndrea, (Prentice Hall, 1994), good one for browsing.
- Mystery! “A Celebration” by Ron Miller, Karen Sharpe. 1996. Celebration of the television program shown on PBS.
- Agatha Christie A to Z by Dawn B. Sova, PhD. You want facts about Christie and her books, this is a good source.
- Detective Fiction, the Collector’s Guide 2nd Edition by John Cooper and B. A. Pike (Scolar Press, 1994).
- A Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery by Susan Oleksiw (G.K. Hall & Co, 1988) A guide to titles in the genre.
- Putting Dell on the Map, A History of the Dell Paperbacks by William H. Lyles (Greenwood Press 1983). Fascinating, if you’re a fan.
- The Cadfael Companion The World of Brother Cadfael by Robin Whiteman, Mysterious Press, 1991. (identified as the “fully revised and updated” edition). I’ve read all of the Cadfael novels, and love them. This book is more about the world he would be living in than the books themselves. Fascinating.
Tip the Wink 
I have an entry in the Gorman tome.
Yes you do, and well deserved.
I have the Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, too, and I think it’s a solid reference, as you say, for browsing. The Whiteman sounds very interesting, and probably very helpful for getting a perspective on the context for those stories. Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure. I’m having a good time re-browsing these as I post them.
What lovely mystery reference books. I am glad you did a post on them. I would love to have Putting Dell on the Map, A History of the Dell Paperbacks. I have The Fine Art of Murder and The Mystery Lover’s Companion; and A Reader’s Guide to the Classic British Mystery. Although your editions are much better. I have a hardcover of Encyclopedia Mysterioso and a paperback copy. I keep one upstairs and one downstairs.
I had just been thinking of doing one of my shelves of mystery reference, but they are not in a good place for taking a photo.
Thank you, Tracy, as I said to Margot, I’m enjoying browsing through them as I type up the posts. You’ll notice many have copyright dates in the 1990s, so I guess that when I was buying them.
A great collection of books, Rick! I can’t wait to see more.
Next week, the other half of the shelf.
I love those kinds of books too, and have many others that would fit in there, but I don’t have a lot of shelves where such tall books would fit. Marv is definitely the expert in the field when it comes to regional mysteries, as he was ahead of the curve. I wish I had bought that Dell book too, as I’m sure I would have enjoyed it at the time.
When we planned our wall of shelves in the dining room, I made sure there were two rows of tall shelving for books such as these, art books, and other things, such as The Complete Calvin and Hobbs. They filled faster than I’d anticipated, but I had a lot of those books on shelves down south and in boxes and have continued to buy them until the last few years.
Impressive array of reference books! I own about half of the books on that shelf (but locating them would require a search). Sadly, the current publishing world doesn’t support books like this any more. Only small presses would publish a reference book about mysteries today.
Thanks. As you see, many of these were published in the 90’s, when such books were still marketable.
WORDPRESS has altered my name from George Kelley to 1412064gk. Don’t know why. A lot of bizarre things are going on.
Oh my. I’m sure you can do the Help chat and get it fixed, George.
This shelf looks like enormous fun to peruse.
It is!
Hmm, 8 comments, 7 replies.
Do I need to feel paranoid?
Nope, it’s up there, it just got caught in edit when I was putting a book title in italics.