Otto Penzler Presents American Mystery Classics
Written by SurfWriter Girls Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel
The Cat Saw Murder, a mystery book with an intriguing black cat on a bright red cover, caught SurfWriter Girl Patti’s eye at the Rancho Santa Margarita Friends of the Library book sale.
Browsing through a table of books, Patti and SurfWriter Girl Sunny scored a real find – six mysteries from the Otto Penzler Presents American Mystery Classics series.
The multi-talented Penzler – author, editor, publisher, and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City – is a legend with mystery writers and readers alike. He’s spent his entire career championing mysteries and detective stories and has won two Edgar Awards (the Academy Awards of mystery writing, named after Edgar Allan Poe).
Penzler’s American Mystery Classics series is dedicated to reissuing classic mystery stories from the past century (many of them out of print) in new editions with new introductions by Penzler and acclaimed authors from Joyce Carol Oates to A.J. Finn.
With Mary Roberts Rinehart, Ellery Queen, Erle Stanley Gardner (Perry Mason series), Frances and Richard Lockridge (Mr. and Mrs. North series) and many other renowned authors on board, there are currently 55 books (and counting) in the series.
The Cat Saw Murder (a seaside mystery written in 1939) lives up to its billing with a tricky whodunnit plot, intrepid amateur sleuth (the 70ish Miss Rachel Murdock), and a cat that is pivotal to the story.
The book, by bestselling author Dolores Hitchens, a prolific mystery writer who wrote under many AKAs, has the added distinction of being the first “cat mystery” in what has grown into a mega-publishing industry.
SurfWriter Girls still have the other AMC mysteries we found to read. We’re looking forward to matching our wits with the stories’ detectives in this ambitious series that showcases the breadth of American mysteries – from cozies and police procedurals to legal and noir.
Since Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), which created literature’s first fictional detective Auguste C. Dupin, writers have been baffling and thrilling us with their intricately crafted mysteries.
Now, thanks to Otto Penzler, we have a century’s worth of reasons to stay up late at night, turning the pages of a book…and keeping the lights on!
Sunny Magdaug and Patti Kishel hold the exclusive rights to this copyrighted material. Publications wishing to reprint it may contact them at surfwriter.girls@gmail.com Individuals and non-profit groups are welcome to post it on social media sites as long as credit is given.
