They Died in Vain -- a cool look at some overlooked mysteries, Part 1 -- Garbo

Some time ago, I came across this small trade paperback on a name-your-price shelf at a library bookstore. I think I gave them a dollar for it, and it's definitely worth a buck, and probably more. 

 

They Died in Vain: Overlooked, Underappreciated, and Forgotten Mystery Novels, edited by Jim Huang. A Drood Review Book by Crum Creek Press, Carmel, Indiana. Originally published in 2002, reprinted 2006.  

Jim Huang and his wife once ran the Deadly Pastimes Booshop in Kalamazoo, which became The Mystery Copmpany. Huang has gone on to manage some college campus bookstores, first at Bryn Mawr, and now at Kenyon College.His blog's been dormant for a while but I love the fact that when he found that someone already had the domain name for Huang's name dot com, he chose to call his blog Stately Huang Manor.

Huang has edited several volumes of "hundred best" lists of mysteries, with voting by the members of the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. The novels in They Died in Vain are by authors who didn't make the cut for the best of the best, but whose work is still of interest. The reviewers are the owners and managers of mystery bookshops, or they were at the time of this volume's publication. I liked it that each reviewer gets a bio, as well as the authors. 

For today, I'll just list a couple of the mysteries mentioned in They Died in Vain, and in future posts, I'll come back with more selections from the collection. 

This time, I just randomly picked two books from the first couple pagesof the alphabetized "shopping list" at the end of the book. I just downladed the Talking Books version of one, and another book by the second author as the Talking Book people didn't have the one I looked for.When I have tried both books out, I'll report back.