Everybody into the Boat!
Okay, nobody’s ever going to mistake The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) for The Private Eye Writers of America (PWA), but private eye writers have played a major role in the MWA right from the beginning
Brett Halliday and Baynard Kendrick were both involved in the founding of the organization back in 1945, and other members of the shamus game have continued to play an often significant role, through the years, both as part of the rank and files, and as part of the executive.
They’ve also contributed ro the MWA’s long-running anthology series, which was started to raise funds for the fledgling organization’s treasury. The first anthology, Murder Cavalcade, was published in 1946, and since then, the MWA has averaged about one short-story anthology a year, often devoted to a theme, edited by best-selling writers and providing a showcase for members.
In fact, an awful lot of the earlier stories were contemporaneous P.I. stories–or what we now call “vintage.” For example, the anthology I’m slowly working my way through at the time of this writing, Crime for Two (1955), had a Mike Shayne story in it that was mostly written by Helen McCloy (she and Brett Halliday, Shayne’s creator, were married at the time).
Speaking of Mike Shayne, a beat-up old copy of Four and Twenty Bloodhounds, edited by Anthony Boucher, remains one of my most treasured early finds, picked up for a quarter (!) at a book sale in the basement of a church in St. Lambert, Quebec, about a million years ago. it included all sort of good P.I. stuff from the likes of Frank Kane, Vern Chute and James M. Fox, as well as “Michael Shayne as I Know Him”, the only non-fiction piece in the book, written by Halliday himself, who gives us the skinny on how he came to create his beloved eye.
YEAR | TITLE | EDITOR(S) |
1946 | Murder Cavalcade | Ken Crossen (un-credited) Foreword by Richard Lockridge |
1947 | Murder By Experts | Ellery Queen |
1950 | Four-&-Twenty Bloodhounds | Anthony Boucher |
1951 | 20 Great Tales Of Murder (aka “Murder Murder Murder”) | Helen McCloy & Brett Halliday |
1952 | Maiden Murders | Intro by John Dickson Carr |
1953 | Crooks Tour | Bruno Fischer |
1954 | Butcher, Baker, Murder-maker | George Harmon Coxe |
1955 | Crime for Two | Frances & Richard Lockridge |
1956 | Eat, Drink, And Be Buried | Rex Stout |
1957 | For Love or Money | Dorothy Gardiner |
1957 | Dolls Are Murder | Harold Q. Masur |
1958 | Big-Time Mysteries | Brett Halliday |
1959 | The Lethal Sex | John D. MacDonald |
1960 | The Comfortable Coffin | Richard S. Prather |
1961 | Tales for a Rainy Night | David Alexander |
1962 | Cream of the Crime | Hugh Pentecost |
1962 | Quality Of Murder: 100 Years of True Crime | Anthony Boucher |
1963 | A Pride of Felons | The Gordons |
1964 | Crimes Across the Sea | John Creasey |
1965 | Masters of Mayhem | Edward D. Radin |
1966 | Sleuths And Consequences | Thomas B. Dewey |
1967 | Murder in Mind | Lawrence Treat |
1968 | With Malice Toward All | Robert L. Fish |
1969 | Merchants of Menace | Hilary Waugh |
1970 | Crime Without Murder | Dorothy Salisbury Davis |
1971 | Murder Most Foul | Harold Q. Masur |
1972 | Dear, Dead Days | Edward D. Hoch |
1973 | Mirror, Mirror, Fatal Mirror | Hans Stefan Santesson |
1974 | Killers of the Mind | Lucy Freeman |
1975 | Every Crime In The Book | Robert L. Fish |
1976 | Tricks and Treats | Joe Gores & Bill Pronzini |
1977 | When Last Seen | Arthur Maling |
1978 | I, Witness | Brian Garfiled |
1978 | Cop Code | John Ball |
1979 | Woman’s Wiles | Michele B. Slung, Gene Stone |
1980 | The Edgar Winners | Bill Pronzini |
1981 | All But Impossible! Impossible Crimes | Edward D. Hoch |
1982 | A Special Kind Of Crime | Lawrence Treat |
1983 | EQ Presents Best Short Stories | Ellery Queen |
1984 | Mystery Hall of Fame | Bill Pronzini, Martin H. Greenberg & Hilary Waugh |
1984 | The Crime Of My Life | Brian Garfield |
1986 | Last Laughs | Gregory McDonald |
1987 | Murder on the Aisle | Mary Higgins Clark |
1987 | Murder California Style SoCal Chapter | Jon L. Breen |
1988 | Distant Danger | Janwillem Van De Wetering |
1989 | Beastly Tales | Sara Paretsky |
1989 | Plots And Pans: Recipes And Antidotes | Nancy Jean Webb |
1990 | The New Edgar Winner | Martin H. Greenberg |
1992 | Mystery Writers of America | Sara Paretsky |
1993 | The Fine Art of Murder | Ed Gorman, Martin H. Greenberg & Jon L. Breen |
1994 | Guilty As Charged | Scott Turow |
1999 | Diagnosis Dead | Jonathan Kellerman |
2000 | The Night Awakens | Mary Higgins Clark |
2001 | Master’s Choice | Lawrence Block |
2002 | Blood on Their Hands | Lawrence Block |
2003 | A Hot And Sultry Night For Crime | Jeffrey Deaver |
2004 | Show Business is Murder | Stuart Kaminsky |
2006 | Death Do Us Part | Harlan Coben |
2008 | The Blue Religion | Michael Connelly |
2009 | The Prosecution Rests | Linda Fairstein |
2009 | In The Shadow Of The Master | Michael Connelly |
2009 | On a Raven’s Wing | Stuart Kaminsky |
2010 | Crimes By Moonlight | Charlaine Harris |
2011 | The Rich And The Dead | Nelson Demille |
2012 | Vengeance | Lee Child |
2013 | The Mystery Box | Brad Meltzer |
2013 | Ice Cold | Jeffrey Deaver & Raymond Benson |
2015 | Manhattan Mayhem | Mary Higgins Clark |
2015 | The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook | Kate White |
2018 | Scream and Scream Again | R.L. Stine |
2019 | Odd Partners | Anne Perry |
2020 | Deadly Anniversaries | Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini |
2022 | Crime Hits Home | S.J. Rozan |
MURDER IN THE LIBRARY
- The Best Anthologies of Original P.I. Stories
- The Best Anthologies of Hard-Boiled, Noir & Pulp Reprints
- Other Mystery Anthologies Worth Hunting For
- The Best American Mystery Stories
- The Akashic Noir Series