Detective Duos

Sleuthing twosomes have long made their mark on detective fiction. From the unnamed narrator in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter" who adroitly recounts the virtuosity of the Parisian detective, C. Auguste Dupin; to Dorothy L. Sayers's beloved Lord Peter Wimsey and Mr. Bunter; to Lillian Jackson Braun's interspecies partnership between Phut Phat (an investigative genius who happens to be a cat) and one of its owners; detective duos have come in all guises. Indeed, there are almost as many variations of compatriot crimefighters as there are types of mystery and detective fiction. In this marvellous anthology, a real-life detective duo-married mystery novelists Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini-have brought together 25 of the best paired puzzle-solvers in short stories of remarkable range and scope. Here are traditional tandems: Sherlock and his admiring Watson, in a devilish puzzler "The Adventure of the Empty House," alongside Nero Wolfe and his (less fawning) employee, Archie Goodwin, in "Fourth of July Picnic." Husband and wife teams are well represented by Frances and Richard Lockridge's Mr. and Mrs. North, Kelley Roos's Jeff and Haila Troy, and Patrick Quentin's Peter and Iris Duluth. Amateurs work alongside professional crimesolvers in such stories as Julie Smith's never-before-published "The End of the Earth," featuring Skip Langdon and Steve Steinman, and the clue-seeking precursors to television's Quincy appear as partnered forensic pathologists Dr. Daniel Coffee and Dr. Motilal Mookerji in Lawrence G. Blochman's "The Phantom Cry-Baby." Sleuthing tandems come in different sexes, so we find Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone and Rae Kelleher alongside Fredric Brown's Ed and Am Hunter, as well as Bill Pronzini's Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon, where crime solving crosses barriers of both gender and time. And here too is a treasure chest of detective fiction styles: pure deduction, the impossible crime, the cozy, the dark comedy, espionage, the procedural,