This book was intriguing. I really enjoyed the author’s writing style. I enjoy Victorian Mysteries. This book was well written and kept me engaged! It’s a must ready for those who love mysteries!

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.

When editor Otto Penzler describes a book as big, he means it! This collection clocks in at over 600 pages. Those who are interested in the evolution of mystery and detective fiction will find much to explore and enjoy here.

The tales are organized into sections entitled Detective, Crime, International and American stories. Read in order or browse widely. Some choices seem unsurprising as, for example, Poe in the American section. More surprising was finding a tale by L Frank Baum (Wizard of Oz fame) included here.

International stories will send readers to France, Russia and Italy for some thrills. Just some of the other authors are Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Lewis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde.

So, dive in readers. There is loads to while away a winter night.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher. All opinions are my own.

The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries is another well curated anthology of classic Victorian crime short fiction edited by Otto Penzler. Released 19th Oct 2021 by Penguin Random House on their Vintage Crime / Black Lizard imprint, it's 640 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is an eclectic and broad collection of stories from disparate authors both famous and lesser known from the Victorian era. The stories are grouped roughly thematically: Detective Stories, Crime Stories, International Stories, and American Stories. There are (by my count) 49 stories from a varied stable of authors which includes Oscar Wilde, Poe, Doyle, H.G. Wells, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, and other titans of English literature. Some of the stories will be familiar to most readers (The Lady, or the Tiger and The Purloined Letter make an appearance) but there were many which were delightfully unfamiliar to me.

As always, Mr Penzler's erudite introductions and background history are one of my main delights with these collections - there are more than a dozen such at this point. I enjoyed quite a lot of these and even enjoyed reading a few of them aloud together (fun road trip activity, passengers read, drivers drives:).

Four and a half stars. Diverting and worthwhile. This would be also be a superb choice for library acquisition, gifting or the home library.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

Penzler's collections are always popular in my library and I'm sure we'll be buying this. As a former student of Victorian literature, I recognized some old favorites and spent an enjoyable, lazy Sunday day immersed in this collection, getting to know them all again.

The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries is a comprehensive reference to the detective short stories published during the Victorian and Edwardian Eras. While some of these stories were published earlier, the massive success of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes' adventures kicked off a bumper crop of authors trying to match his success. In the Big Book, we see such literary luminaries as Charles Dickens, WilkieCollins, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde, and Guy de Maupassant trying their hands at the detective short story, to greater or lesser success. Most of the other authors were not so familiar, at least to me. Many are unknown to today's reader.

Otto Penzler has written a brief introduction to each story with helpful background on the story and author. I was delighted to find the first mystery stories featuring the female detective, much different from today's market! It's impossible to pinpoint a favorite story in such a massive collection, but these display the panoply of British society from high to low and a considerable degree of inventiveness. It struck me that the authors and the British reading public must have had a fascination with all things "exotic," from fine jewels (usually from foreign lands) and unusual detectives with unusual methods. One even used an Indian snake-charmer to aid him in his investigations. I expect this fascination can be attributed to the immense expansion of the British Empire in the era.

The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries is an invaluable addition to the shelf of the scholar, collector, and readers of detective stories. I highly recommend it as a "bedtime" book as well. Thanks to Netgalley and Black Lizard for an advance digital copy. The opinions are my own.

This book includes many favorite authors, and that’s what grabbed my attention initially. The comments by the editor, Otto Penzler, contributed to the value of the tome. While he acknowledges that some of the stories are more Edwardian in their composition, it is because the Victorian era style developed when the queen was a bit older. This work contains only pieces written during “her time on this side of the grass.”

Before each tale, Penzler gives brief detail about the circumstances of the publication and background of the author and their works. As the title says, this is a big book, and it is full of mysteries. I read several of the mysteries, but I didn't do well with the Edwardian writing style. Overall, if you like Mysteries, you will enjoy these stories. This is the kind of book that is best read in chunks, and not continuously.

A copy of The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries was provided to me by NetGalley and Vintage Crime/Black Lizard Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, for an honest review.