I've been dipping into this book on and off for a while, and finally finished it today. It's a collection of short stories by different authors, all writen in the late 1800's - the same time as the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have to confess I found it hard to finsih this book: while most of the stories were good (though sometimes very much of their time), the quality seemed to drop off towards the end: or maybe after a while all the stories seemed very similar.
It was interesting to see how the detective story has developed - I found some of the endings fantastic but that was viewing them through my 'modern day' expectation of crime stories. I expect that when they were written the sensationalism of some of the stories was very much enjoyed by their readers! These days I think we require a bit more realism, or a better explanation of physics or science, than the readers of the day. Many of the stories did contain clever puzzles which the detectived worked out: much less evidence based than crime stories these days, but none the less enjoyable.
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