The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

Starred review from August 28, 2017
Edgar-winner Penzler’s entertaining and wide-ranging seventh Big Book (after 2016’s The Big Book of Jack the Ripper) offers 72 stories featuring out-and-out bad guys, such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and others whose morality is more ambiguous, such as Leslie Charteris’s the Saint. In addition to the many expected names (Donald Westlake, Edgar Wallace, Cornell Woolrich), Penzler resurrects such now-obscure writers as Everett Rhodes Castle, May Edginton, and George Randolph Chester. Chester weighs in with perhaps the most intriguing title, “The Universal Covered Carpet Tack Company,” which centers on a clever and elaborate stock swindle. Bertram Atkey’s gifted pickpocket “Smiler” Bunn demonstrates his “celebrated imitation of a gentleman pinching a blood-orange” at the start of “The Adventure of ‘The Brain.’ ” Like many entries, this tale boasts a killer opening line. Another example is H.G. Wells’s “The Hammerpond Park Burglary” (“It is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a trade, or an art”). The fruits of Penzler’s decades of diligent study of the genre pay off handsomely in this fat volume. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber.

August 15, 2017
Black Lizard's latest plus-size anthology, reprinting 72 stories, practically all of them published in the U.S. and U.K. over the past two centuries, is a monument to bad behavior.With obvious exceptions like Hannibal Lecter and Count Dracula, fictional criminals have rarely attracted the same attention as fictional detectives because they've rarely had the same staying power. Even so, veteran anthologist Penzler (Bibliomysteries, 2017, etc.) has assembled a lineup of franchise luminaries likely to quicken the pulse of many a genre fan: Grant Allen's Colonel Clay, E.W. Hornung's A.J. Raffles, Thomas W. Hanshew's Hamilton Cleek, Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin, Clifford Ashdown's Romney Pringle, K. and Hesketh Prichard's Don Q, Sax Rohmer's Dr. Fu Manchu, Frederick Irving Anderson's The Infallible Godahl and Sophie Lang, O. Henry's Jeff Peters and Andy Tucker, Jack Boyle's Boston Blackie, Gerald Kersh's Karmesian, Edgar Wallace's Four Square Jane, Leslie Charteris' Simon Templar, Erle Stanley Gardner's Ed Jenkins, Lester Leith, Paul Pry, and the Patent Leather Kid, Edward D. Hoch's Nick Velvet, Robert L. Fish's Kek Huuygens, Lawrence Block's Bernie Rhodenbarr, Martin Ehrengraf, and John Keller, Max Allan Collins' Quarry, Donald E. Westlake's Dortmunder, and of course Dracula. The most notable omission, mentioned in Penzler's brief Introduction but unaccountably absent from the table of contents, is Melville Davisson Post's crooked lawyer, Randolph Mason. Although these franchise entries are naturally of varying quality, many of them mark their villains' (or their rogues'--Penzler's conscientious attempt to categorize every single one of these nefarious leads as either one or the other or both seems a pointless exercise) first appearances, giving this collection an added historical interest. Newcomers may want to begin with the most celebrated nonfranchise tales: Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Body Snatcher," Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game," Thomas Burke's "The Hands of Mr. Ottermole," Ben Hecht's "The Fifteen Murderers," and William Irish's "After-Dinner Story." Old hands may note that bad guys can make just as big a splash in a short story as in a long one: the lengthiest item here, Donald E. Keyhoe's pulp novella The Mystery of the Golden Skull, packs no greater punch than the oldest story of all, one of the shortest, and one of the most shockingly unexpected from its source, Washington Irving's "The Story of a Young Robber." Weighing in at a svelte 928 pages, Penzler's omnibus is equally impossible to pick up and put down.

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October 1, 2017
Veteran anthologist Penzler's survey of rogues and villains in crime fiction is structured chronologically, with sections covering the Victorians, nineteenth-century Americans, Edwardians, early twentieth-century Americans, Between the Wars, the pulp era, and the moderns. There are plenty of familiar faces, including Robert Louis Stevenson ( The Body-Snatcher ), Bram Stoker ( Dracula's Guest ), Richard Connell ( The Most Dangerous Game ), Maurice Leblanc ( The Mysterious Railway Passenger ), Loren D. Estleman ( The Black Spot ), and Donald E. Westlake ( Too Many Crooks, a Dortmunder story). There is, Penzler tells us, a difference between rogues and villainsrogues are thieves, swindlers, blackmailers, and forgers, while villains are murderers and psychopathsand the stories bear this distinction out, with the tales of roguery being generally lighter in tone than the villainous pieces. This anthology is a delight for crime-fiction fans; it's a chance to revisit some old favorites and to discover some new ones, like Bertram Atkey, creator of the likable crook Smiler Bunn, and George Fielding Eliot, a writer of military fiction and nonfiction who dabbled, quite successfully, in pulp fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)