From Sam Spade to Philip Marlowe, Nero Wolfe, Lord Peter Wimsey, and the formidable Ellery Queen, Great Detectives assembles the star sleuths of the past century in a dazzling array of classic tales. There has never been a collection to match this one, featuring sixteen short stories by the best mystery writers from England and America. --From dust jacket. Contents: Foreword / David Willis McCullough -- The big bow mystery / Israel Zangwill -- The queen's square / Dorothy L. Sayers -- The invisible man / G. K. Chesterton -- The girl in the train / Agatha Christie -- The murder on the lotus pond / Robert van Gulik -- Hand upon the waters / William Faulkner -- The Sam Spade stories: A man called Spade ; They can only hang you once ; Too many have lived / Dashiell Hammett -- The hunchback cat / Edmund Crispin -- Trouble is my business / Raymond Chandler -- The adventure of Abraham Lincoln's clue / Ellery Queen -- See no evil / Rex Stout -- Yesterday I lived! / Ray Bradbury -- The chill / Ross Macdonald -- The murder of Santa Claus / P. D. James -- Never shake a family tree / Donald E. Westlake -- Death notes / Ruth Rendell -- Sadie when she died / Ed McBain.