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.