Clinical psychologist Mary Kennedy draws upon her knowledge of Freudian dream interpretation in Nightmares Can Be Murder, the first in the Dream Club Mystery Series. Taking a break from her Talk Radio series, Kennedy dreams up a unique hook for this enjoyable tale set in charming Savannah, Georgia. The novel introduces Taylor Blake, a successful Chicago business consultant with a Wharton MBA, who is visiting her sister Alison, the appreciably less business-savvy owner of a floundering candy store. As Taylor turns around the business with suggestions for expanding the shop to include café offerings, she attends meetings of the Dream Club, a group of women who meet to discuss and unpack the content of their dreams. While dreams might be premonitory, no one could have predicted the untimely demise of Chico Hernandez, the handsome and flirtatious owner of the salsa dance studio across the street from Ali’s shop. Matters deteriorate further when it becomes evident that Alison had previously dated Chico and could be fingered for the murder. Fortunately, the resourceful Taylor extricates Ali from the crisis, and, in the process, forges a new bond with her sister. In the end, Taylor discovers the joys of creativity, while Ali finally develops business sense. And, yes, for a number of reasons that I won’t disclose, Taylor commits to her new life in Savannah.

For the readers among us who are (very) willing to suspend disbelief, Dixie Lyle’s genre-bending To Die Fur should claim first place on your TBR lists. Second in the Whiskey, Tango & Foxtrot Mystery series, To Die Fur once again features Deirdre “Foxtrot” Lancaster, Tango, her ghost cat, and Whisky, a shape-shifting dog. Yes, the series has a paranormal element, as Foxtrot plies her trade as assistant to eccentric millionaire Zelda “ZZ” Zoransky and spiritual superintendent of ZZ’s pet cemetery. Much of Foxtrot’s time is devoted to resolving problems in the cemetery, where an array of ghost animals reside, not always peacefully. Still with me? This mystery focuses upon a contest of sorts among various parties interested in acquiring Augustus, an albino tiger, whom Foxtrot’s employer has rescued and housed in her specially equipped private zoo. Each of the parties vying for Augustus has discernible drawbacks; is anyone a clear winner? Before ZZ can render her verdict, Augustus dies, victim of an insidious poisoning. End of contest, right? Not so quick! The battle begins again, this time over the privilege of acquiring Augustus’ body. How was Augustus killed, and who murdered him? You’ll never guess!

The author of this lively, readable, and well-researched short biography values Poe the fiction writer over the poet or the critic, writing, “It is the mastery of narrative voice—and above all, the creation of the detective story—that made Poe an author that Lincoln and the world at large placed beside Shakespeare.” He even declares that “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is “literally the most influential short story of the nineteenth century.” Included is a brief annotated primary and secondary bibliography.

Having covered the 20th century in four volumes, Kabatchnik now turns to the earliest known theatrical works, beginning with Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound. Not surprisingly, the ancient Greeks and Romans and the Elizabethans are most extensively discussed, with the centuries between fairly sparse ground. As in previous volumes, each entry has a detailed plot summary, stage history, adaptations to other media, and where appropriate, awards and honors. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (c. 429 BC), “one of the first known plays to introduce the motif of crime and punishment, and the step-by-step investigation of a murder by interrogating witnesses,” managed only second prize in the City of Dionysia competition, but Sophocles won many more first prizes than either Aeschylus or Euripides.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet has the last and longest entry, 35 pages including eight of plot synopsis. The stage history, dense with names and dates, describes what various actors brought to the title role. There are some priceless descriptions of misguided 20th-century productions, low-lighted by three 1969 disasters on New York stages. One had “Ellis Rabb directing and playing the lead in a Nehru jacket and other actors wearing turtlenecks, at times breaking through the fourth wall and walking through the audience. Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune said that, as director, Rabb was ‘all thumbs and all banged thumbs at that.’” Tony Richardson’s production starred “a balding, bearded, machine-gun-paced Nicol Williamson, stressing Hamlet’s love of both Ophelia and Gertrude. His bitter scene with his mother ends with a long embrace.” Joseph Papp’s Central Park production featured “Cleavon Little, his skin color emphasized throughout the proceedings. When Polonius asks what he is reading, Hamlet replies, ‘Ebony, baby!’ At one point Horatio treats Claudius to a custard pie, full in the face. Instead of Hamlet, it is Horatio who speaks with the gravedigger, rebuking him, ‘Don’t give me any of that Shakespeare crap!’”

A reliable and thorough reference source that is immensely entertaining and browsable, this whole series is a landmark of mystery and theatrical scholarship.

As Lawrence Block notes in his foreword, Donald Westlake never wrote “a bad sentence, a clumsy paragraph, or a dull page.” Gathered here are introductions to his anthologies and collections, reprints of his own novels, and books of other writers; reminiscences of print and film work, including an account of his collaboration with director Stephen Frears on the film version of Jim Thompson’s The Grifters; recipes, interviews, a dozen pages from an unpublished autobiography, and a small selection of letters on professional matters. “Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You,” his inflammatory 1960 farewell to science fiction, is accurately described by the editor as “one of the most spectacular acts of bridge burning in the history of publishing.” “Tangled Webs for Sale: Best Offer” has an unusual slant on literary and cinematic plagiarism. A previously unpublished essay recounts how the acclaimed 1997 novel Ax affected (at least briefly) his future writing plans.

Personal note: I am honored to have been the recipient of one of the reprinted letters, Westlake’s reply to my request for an essay on Peter Rabe (which is also reprinted in the book) for Murder off the Rack: Critical Studies of Ten Paperback Masters (1989), which I edited with Martin H. Greenberg. The letter begins, “A lot of work for no money. As my agent, Knox Burger, assures me, this is the kind of offer I seem unable to resist.” In a letter requesting information from Rabe, he is even more explicit: “A small article in an obscure volume in an unimportant series from a nothing publisher: hot damn!”

Back in the late 1950s, when Borderline first appeared, it was called Border Lust and its author was identified as Don Holliday. Holliday was one of the young Lawrence Block’s phalanx of pseudonyms and, considering the amount of skin-on-skin behavior throughout the short novel, the book’s original title was more accurate a description than this Hard Case Crime reissue. Set on the El Paso-Juarez boarder, it involves a quintet of characters who, in Bridge of San Luis Rey-fashion, are unwittingly drawn to a final, fatal meet—professional gambler Marty, borderline-nymphomaniac divorcée Meg, hipster-chick hitchhiker Lily, hot redhead Cassie, and, the wild card, Weaver, a straight-razor-wielding psycho killer. Though the characters are rough-edged, Block does a fine job of weaving their activities into a tightly knit finale. The audio includes three other examples of his early work. “The Burning Fury” is a very short study of a pickup at a logger bar. “A Fire at Night” follows the shifting moods of an arsonist as he watches his effort’s flaming result. Both feature unexpected endings. That leaves the most entertaining, and most Block-like entry in the collection—“Stag Party Girl,” a novella in which private detective Ed London is hired by adman Mark Donahue to keep him alive until his wedding in 24 hours. He’s received threats from his former girlfriend, “a model, more or less” named Karen Price. At Donahue’s bachelor party, Karen pops out of the cake and is immediately gunned down by an unknown member of the party. Donahue is arrested and, shortly after his release, is found dead, an apparent suicide. The cops close the case but London, in true Matt Scudder mode, continues to investigate. Reader Mike Dennis has a deep, rugged voice that sounds as if he swallowed Charles McGraw. It adds the perfect hardboiled touch to these enjoyable, if unvarnished, crime yarns.

“I hear of Sherlock everywhere since you became his chronicler,” says Mycroft Holmes to Dr. Watson in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter.” Little did Mycroft know that the indefatigable Watson would still be chronicling those adventures well into the 21st century. Or maybe he did know. At any rate, the original dynamic duo return yet again in The Adventure of the Plated Spoon and Other Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Loren D. Estleman, who also provides the introduction and contributes the title story, a novella in which Holmes and Watson are joined by Nick Carter himself, the original, not the spy from the long-running paperback series that began in the middle 1960s. There are several excerpts from novels in the book, including one from A Study in Terror (credited to Ellery Queen though written by Paul W. Fairman) that features Jack the Ripper. The novel was filmed under the same title. Another excerpt is Laurie King’s “Two Shabby Figures” from The Beekeeper’s Apprentice. Pastiches other than Estleman’s include stories by Vincent Starrett, Edward D. Hoch, Adrian Conan Doyle, J. M. Barrie, and Larry D. Sweazy. Not everything in the book is about Holmes and Watson. Sax Rhomer is represented by a selection from The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Deborah Morgan’s “The Mysterious Case of the Urn of Ash; or, What Would Sherlock Do?” is a contemporary tale of a trunk full of Sherlockian material. There’s a seldom reprinted story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, too, making this a must-have book for the Holmes fan and good reading for anybody.

If you’re in the mood to explore crime fiction’s past, you need look no further than The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century, edited by Otto Penzler. The anthology’s 604 pages cover almost the entire century, with stories by writers both familiar (Poe, Hawthorne, Irving) and unfamiliar (Ottolengui, Moffett, Hinkley). Some of the stories are familiar, too, but many of them will be new to most readers. Penzler provides an informative introduction to the volume, with shorter intros for the individual stories. I learned quite a bit from the latter, including the fact that the fiction of Robert W. Chambers, recently brought into prominence by television’s True Detective, was also the source for one of the more popular shows in radio’s history, Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons, which itself spawned the wonderful parodies by Bob and Ray, Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons. If you have any interest in the history of the mystery, this is a book you need to own. For everyone else, it’s a fine volume to read while sitting by the fire on a cold winter’s night.