The Perfect Crime : The Big Bow Mystery

Resumen del libro

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world's first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since."The Detective Story Club", launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891, and re-published by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called The Perfect Crime', Israel Zangwill's novel invented the concept of the locked room mystery' and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter. A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him.

No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled.

Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?'This new edition includes a brand new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert, Dr John Curran, author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks'.

Biografía del autor

Israel Zangwill nació en Londres en 1864. Procedente de una familia judía de inmigrantes rusos, trabajó como periodista y profesor. Todas sus obras, que gozaron de una enorme popularidad en su momento, retratan de manera tragicómica la vida y las inquietudes de la comunidad hebrea en la que se crió. Además de las novelas Children of the Ghetto (1892) y The King of Schnorrers (1894), escribió varias piezas teatrales, entre las que destaca The Melting Pot (1908), que entusiasmó a Theodore Roosevelt. El gran misterio de Bow es, junto con Los crímenes de la calle Morgue, de Edgar Allan Poe, y El misterio del cuarto amarillo, de Gaston Leroux, una de las narraciones pioneras del género. A lo largo de toda su vida colaboró de manera activa con el incipiente movimiento sionista. Murió en Midhurst en 1926.