They Died in Vain: Overlooked, Underappreciated and Forgotten Mystery Novels

In 2000, the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association published 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century, a reader's guide to mystery novels. The books and authors in that volume were all reasonably well known. For this follow-up volume, published two years later, IMBA members were asked to recommend their favorite "overlooked, underappreciated, and forgotten" books. Huang's only criteria in gathering their responses were that no author would be represented more than once, and no bestsellers were allowed.

This book contains 103 short essays -- one or two pages each -- in which booksellers recommend a favorite book that even mystery fans might have somehow missed. The essays are well written, and as one might expect from booksellers, they show more do a fine job of teasing the story, placing each book in its proper sub-genre, and in many cases, summarizing the author's career beyond the recommended book.

It is in the nature of a book like this that you may have trouble finding some of these books. Huang notes in his introduction that 53 of the 103 books are out of print, and some of those were only a few years old at the time. (And that was in 2002; one imagines that even more of them are OP by now.) But I am lucky enough to have a large urban public library where I can find a copy of most of these books, and I was pleasantly surprised at how many of them have been reissued as e-books.

Did I need to read this book? No, I did not. With a Libby wishlist that's already several hundred titles long -- far longer than I can ever possibly finish, especially since publishers are so thoughtless as to keep publishing new books instead of letting us get caught up on our TBR piles -- I didn't need to be teased with 103 possible new books to read. But I enjoyed the tease very much, and there are eighteen more books on that wishlist than there were last week. show less

This is a companion volume to A Drood Review Book Agatha and Anthony Awarding wining “100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century.”

The original publication dates run from 1878 through 2000.

Booksellers and others were asked to contribute 5 books that did not make the 100, but thought they should have. Then they were asked to write no more than two reviews of those favorites. This book includes 103 of these reviews. The introduction indicates 53 of the books reviewed are not longer in print. A brief, interesting paragraph of each contributor is included.

I do not have the “100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century” and probably picked this one up at a used book sale ($0.50). However, I have found it fun reading and used it to lead me to show more authors I had not read before such as Ruth Dudley Edwards, Cyril Hare, and Catherine Aird. show less