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INTRODUCTION
IN this book a number of writers of great fame and talent have been summoned to the aid of the Howard League for Penal Reform, and the hving authors have most generously given their stories. In a way this is understandable because all writers depend, to a greater or lesser degree, on the criminal classes. If it weren't for their illegal industry all policemen, judges, the barristers down at the Old Bailey, a large number of solicitors and the editors of many Sunday newspapers would have to be put out to grass, and all authors of detective stories would be out of business. So think of these contributors as not only playing their part in making our country a fairer place to live in, but also as repaying a debt.
Crime writers, or mystery writers, are often treated absurdly in literary circles as second class citizens. They don't win the Booker Prize, or the Prix Goncourt, although certainly those mistresses of suspense, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Highsmith and P. D. James rank very high on the list of our most distinguished novelists. It's quite easy to write an unhappy novel about adultery in Islington, it's far harder and far more rewarding for the reader, to construct a story of suspense and mystery with a surprising and yet credible solution. Many of the greatest works of all time, including the Orestaia, Hamlet and Bleak House, have been crime stories. Jane Eyre has a mystery and Orley Farm is a classic tale of forgery. Even a novel like Great Expectations, perhaps one of the half-dozen most satisfying in our language, has a plot which misleads the reader and leaves him guessing until the end. Suspense and surprise, the essential tools of the art of fiction, are used with the most skill by crime
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