Hunted Down

Dickens was fascinated by crime. Murders, especially, fascinated him, and the skills of the detectives engaged in solving them. Peter Haining casts his net wide in this collection of twelve stories that embody that fascination. He is justified too, in his emphasis on their influence on crime fiction and detective stories of the past century. As a coda to Dickens' tales, M. R. James' intriguing story The Edwin Drood Syndicate subjects the mystery of Dickens' last and most enigmatic novel to detailed scrutiny, entertainingly dissecting it until every permutation of the plot is examined.