"Tricky, stark, brutal," says Publishers Weekly. "An accomplished short story writer." This mammoth, 160,000-word collection brings together for the first time the most important short mystery fiction of two-time Edgar winner Francis M. Nevins. The stories, culled from the pages of Ellery Queen's and Alfred Hitchcock's mystery magazines, run the gamut from classic puzzles to nightmarish chillers. Adds Publishers Weekly: "A valuable introduction plus brief afterwords to each story illustrate how Nevins has been able to combine his legal expertise and personal interests into a rich synergy of fiction and nonfiction."

Author Biography

Francis M. Nevins has been a legal aid lawyer, a law school professor, an ardent scholar of classic mystery writers including Cornell Woolrich, and--for almost forty years--a skilled practitioner of the deductive detective story. He is the author of six novels and numerous books of mystery scholarship, including Cornucopia of Crime, due this year. This is his first book for Perfect Crime.