Tantaliz

The 12 stories in this carefully-assembled collection reflect the history of the locked room mystery story. Beginning with the grandfather of the genre, Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic, "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" featuring the great Sherlock Holmes, the reader will move on into the twentieth century, and be entertained by such modern masters as MacKinlay Kantor and Erle Stanley Gardner. The stories demonstrate the remarkable variety of the locked room puzzle: the scene of these impossible crimes might be a log cabin in the mountains, and it might be a big-city automat. The characters range from telephone operators to scientists to mystery writers themselves.

Jack Wodham's "Big Time Operator" centers around a machine that allows people to travel in time; and "Vanishing Act," by contemporary writers Bill Pronzini and Michael Kurland, involves a magician whose astonishing feats may be more than just mere illusion. Here then are a dozen choice morsels to challenge, entice, frustrate — and tantalize.