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The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery  By  cover art

The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery

By: Israel Zangwill
Narrated by: Colin Mace
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Publisher's summary

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world's first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that has copied the scenario since.

The Detective Story Club, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearinghouse for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.

Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891 and republished by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called The Perfect Crime, Israel Zangwill's novel invented the concept of the ‘locked room mystery' and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter.

A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies, and there seems to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remain, and the instrument with which the murder was committed cannot be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder.

The greatest detectives in the land are puzzled. Here indeed is the perfect crime, the work of a master mind.

Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?

This new edition includes a brand-new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert Dr. John Curran, author of Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks.

©2015 Israel Zangwill (P)2015 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Attractively bound in black and gold, with vivid coloured jackets, these books are bound to be immensely popular." (Daily Mirror)

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