Defining what is a mystery is just as elusive as pinpointing its invention. I have customarily described “mystery” as any work of fiction in which a crime, or the threat of a crime, is central to the plot or theme of the work. I would not argue against anyone who suggests that this is an extremely expansive view of the genre, as it includes the detective story, crime fiction, psychological suspense, espionage, thriller, noir, police procedural, private eye, and variations and sub-genres of seemingly infinite variety.

It is an imperfect definition, to be sure, as it would necessarily have to include western fiction, which almost invariably includes a crime or crimes but, since it is its own genre (which has its own challenges, both in claiming the date of its creation and in being defined) it can be left aside.

An area where we may come to a little more accuracy and general agreement about its parameters is the Golden Age of detective fiction. Most people glibly define it as books and stories written between the two world wars, and point to the first Agatha Christie novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920) as the benchmark novel. Of course, nothing is quite so simple, as it was published two years after the Great War ended and the time frame ignores E. C. Bentley’s masterpiece, Trent’s Last Case (1913). At the other end of the time continuum, many of the Golden Age writers who got their start in the 1920s were still going strong after World War II ended in 1945. Two of the genre’s giants, in fact, Christie and Ellery Queen, were still releasing novels in the 1970s, as was John Dickson Carr, whose first book was published in 1930.

The Golden Age may be considered in the same fashion as we refer to art, which is that we know it when we see it. The time frame, and even the specific sub-genre of the detective story as one of the buckets of water in the deep well of mystery fiction, may be elastic enough that they do not fit little pigeon holes of dates and genre, nor should we care.

Which brings us to American Golden Age Detective Stories, which features virtually all the giants of mystery fiction produced between the world wars. Alas, no Charlie Chan, no Philo Vance, no Mr. Moto, as their authors never wrote short stories featuring those detectives.