THE BIG BOOK of ROGUES and VILLIANS by Otto Penzler is exactly what the title suggests, and is a fun and humorous analysis of several short stories where the gems included are so very bad that they are good.. or at least good enough for inclusion here for the purpose of providing a laugh or two.

I’ve read this book over a long period of time since it’s easy to just read a story or two then set it down to pick it up again at a later date, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it because of this.

Recommended to those who like compilations of short stories, and especially ones that can be bad but be fun to laugh at - which probably isn’t what the authors intended, but otherwise forgotten clunkers are given their time in the spotlight if only to provide amusement as a result of the absurdity on display.

4 stars.

Overall, an enjoyable book, but not exactly a cover to cover read. It's over 900 pages! This is more the type of book that you read a piece at a time, rather than start to finish, but it has a lot of interesting information that I enjoyed.

From time to time, a lot of the time actually, the most interesting people are the... bad people. This is an indispensable guide to the bad guys, sure to be a welcome addition in every literary home library.

This book is a fantastic read ,it introduce to you different authors who wrote wrote classes that I've never heared of or ever read before especially the ones with the rogues and villains in them some I liked ,some was ok and some I loved , but in all it's a great book to pick up and read .With that said I would like to think Netgalley for giving me a chance at reading it and review it

I appreciate the labor of love this collection is, but most of the pieces didn't grab me. The length of the collection alone is off putting - so much to read! I really appreciate how the book/stories are chronological, but felt like it was missing female voices.

The first of these collections that didn't thoroughly grab me - this, for me, is a work to be appreciated as both an object and as a labor of love by the authors and editor alike, rather than read for enjoyment. First, it's very size makes both the digital and print editions hard to manage and second, you lose the forest for the trees a bit because of how many historical/geographical distinctions are made and included. I appreciate showing the scope of the genre but by the beginning of The Pulp Era I had lost a grasp on where we'd all started. Anyhoo, small quibbles on what should be included in most crime-lovers' libraries.

What more can I say but ... Pull up a comfy chair and delve into the creme de la creme of fictional villains.

This is a BIG book, 944 pages, including 73 stories from both famous authors (O. Henry, Erle Stanley Gardner, Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins and many others) as well as authors who are less well known today than they were in their contemporary periods, but may be familiar to fans of the old pulp magazines such as Phantom Detective (C. S. Montanye, Paul Ernst, Donald Keyhoe, etc).

The collection is broken down and arranged chronologically: The Victorians, Nineteenth-Century Americans, The Edwardians, Early Twentieth-Century Americans, Between The World Wars, The Pulp Era, Post-World War II, and The Moderns. Each of the stories has a short introduction including publication notes and author bios. The intros were a real treat to read and even though I love detective fiction trivia, there was quite a lot that was new to me.

I love anthologies and collections, and this one is no exception. The hook for the anthology is that the stories feature one or more rogues/villains. Sometimes they're portrayed in a more favorable light, like the stories featuring Lupin and Raffles and some are just dastardly, Dracula and Horace Dorrington, for example.

Since the book covers such a broad span of time, some of the stories reflect the language and dialogue of their period, but for anyone comfortable reading a Holmes story, these stories won't present any problems at all.

I enjoyed quite a lot of these and even enjoyed reading a few of them aloud together (fun road trip activity, passenger reads, driver drives :).

Heartily recommend this collection. I found a number of authors who were not previously familiar to me for further reading.

The anthology's editor, Otto Penzler, has curated another superbly entertaining thematic collection.

Four stars

Great collection of stories! Will definitely hand sell it this holiday season to my customers who love a good mystery. Great Christmas gift!

Well, go figure. I had this one pegged as a surefire winner since I have loved other collections he's edited, but it turns out that almost all that is good here is the cover. Does Penzler remember that women also write?
I received my copy free and early from Net Galley and Doubleday for review purposes.

Another great anthology from Otto Penzler, this time investigating crime.

Focusing on criminals from the Victorian era to modern day fiction, the Big Book of Rogues and Villains has something for everyone. Some of the bad guys are mostly good like Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder, who is more of a bungler than a burglar. Some are misunderstood like Dracula. Others are pure evil like Dr. Fu Manchu. However, all are entertaining. There is great value in this curated collection of 72 stories. It has over 900 pages of criminal enterprises to delight readers with hours of pleasure. It is also fun to jump from era to era and see how writing has changed over the decades.

The Big Book of Rogues and Villains is great for fans of traditional mysteries such as the Holmes or Christie canon. The author list sounds like a Who’s Who of great fiction from the last 150 years. It includes Washington Irving, H.G. Wells, Sinclair Lewis and even O. Henry, who are best known for genres other than crime. There are many twentieth century authors that are unfamiliar to modern readers, which is a shame based on the skill of their stories located in this anthology.

Overall, this collection is highly recommended for readers of mystery stories of all kinds. It is a great way to find new authors whose larger body of works are waiting for discovery by new readers. 5 stars!

Thanks to the publisher, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, and netgalley for an advanced review copy. This book will be published on October 24, 2017.

I love this book you can
Read it in bits and pieces and savor the stories that most appeal to you. This volume deals wurh rogues and criminals but features obscure tales contains little know bad guys. The stories are fun to read and take just a little of your time. Plus you learn some history. So get this book.

I’m a big fan of short story collections because they allow you to read small pieces at a time and get a wide variety of material. I am also a fan of the Mystery genre and how it has evolved from way back in the day when women were still property through now when our voices are now rivaling those of the male gender. Penzler provides an opportunity to look at some of Literature’s Big Bads’ in more than 70 stories that examine the depravity humanity offers to counter its heroes. Be they skilled in murder, theft, lies, disloyalty or just not quite right in the head, all of them have graced the pages for over a century to entertain and enrapture readers. After all, who would Sherlock be without Moriarty?

As the title of the book suggests he looks at Rogues and Villains by offering up a way to distinguish the two based on the level of ‘bad’ that can be attributed to their crimes and mentality; not all sin is created equal. Each offering is a fairly decent length so you feel as if you are making good use of your time with these delectable forays into the negative aspect of human conscience.

I only found 3 negatives.

The first is in the presentation. The purpose of you reading this book will dictate how you go about acquiring it. Are you looking to read from page one straight through or have something that will allow you to use it more as a research tool to skip around to the parts that hold the most interest for you? I often detest when authors break up their work in multiple volumes because more often than not it feels like they are fleecing readers out of money by forcing them to buy more instead of condensing. Putting everything into one book instead of multiples would save on printing costs and passing those savings onto the consumer would be a positive. This is probably the first time ever I would argue the opposite.

It’s a massive piece of work whether you go print or digital. In print you need two hands and several pillows to help balance and take the pressure off your arms. It’s nearly 1000 pages and printed in a double column magazine style so you’ll be popping ibuprofen to deal with eye strain every 30 minutes or so. Don’t forget the heating pad for your aching joints. In digital you have no issues with weight and thankfully get the normal full page so no eye strain. However you also don’t get the ease of access to flipping to specific stories like you do with paper and if you only want to read about specific baddies having to go back and forth between the TOC and the chapter is not so much fun. This was an incredible work but would have been better served in a series of 3 volumes minimum.

Penzler includes more than just a focus on literature’s dark side, he also helps you delve into their creators and lets you see how crime and its effect on novels has changed from The Victorian Age through Modern time periods. His stories are arranged across categories that reflect the time period in which they were written.

The second negative concerns the availability of Modern era stories. There were very few and considering the breadth of what could be chosen having 3 from the same author, even if it’s an author I like, was a letdown.

The third negative again deals with variety of authors in that around 5% of the over 70 stories chosen were by a female author. It seems hard to believe that in the 150 years’ worth of mysteries he couldn’t find more female voices to add to this collection particularly since he often used multiple works by the same male author – why couldn’t he have just used 1 and given that space to a different voice.

There were quite a few names I recognized in this work but there were also quite a few I had never heard of which made it fun to expand my knowledge base, see how the same crime could be represented differently depending on POV or time period and examine the duality of good versus bad as it pertains to literature.

This is an excellent collection of detective stories that spans the ages. A high recommend for those who enjoy mystery.

Loved this collection of stories that have rememberable, prominent villains. Even as an English major, a lot of them I hadn't taken the time to read until now. Glad I did! Anyone a fan of classic antagonists would love to spend a lazy afternoon browsing through this anthology.