These 32 classic crime stories illuminate the genre's best-known plot constructions--including "the locked room", "the caper", "hoist on their own petards", and "over the edge". Covering over 150 years of crime and detective fiction, featuring styles from the hard-boiled to the cozy, Murderous Schemes profiles the writing of Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Dorothy L. Sayers, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and many others.

Contents: Introduction / Donald E. Westlake — The shadow of the goat / John Dickson Carr — What, no butler? / Damon Runyon — The Leopold locked room / Edward D. Hoch — The man who read John Dickson Carr / William Brittain — The secret garden / G. K. Chesterton — The necklace of pearls / Dorothy L. Sayers — They can only hang you once / Dashiell Hammett — Busted Blossoms / Stuart M. Kaminsky — A costume piece / E. W. Hornung — The impossible theft / John F. Suter — Don't know much about art / Simon Brett — The ultimate caper / Donald E. Westlake — The mysterious death on the underground railway / Baroness Emmuska Orczy — The blue geranium / Agatha Christie — The adventure of Abraham Lincoln's clue / Ellery Queen — The affair of the twisted scarf / Rex Stout — The landlady / Roald Dahl — The orderly world of Mr. Appleby / Stanley Ellin — Bless this house / Christianna Brand — Someday I'll plant more walnut trees / Lawrence Block — "Thou art the man" / Edgar Allan Poe — The adventure of the dying detective / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — The master of mystery / Jack London — The fat man / Isak Dinesen — Midnight in Beauchamp Row / Anna Katharine Green — I'll be waiting / Raymond Chandler — The possibility of evil / Shirley Jackson — The secret lover / Peter Lovesey — A jury of her peers / Susan Glaspell — The hands of Mr. Ottermole / Thomas Burke — Tang / Chester Himes — Little apple hard to peel / Fredric Brown