In 1994, The Crime of Miss Oyster Brown, the second mystery short story collection from Peter Lovesey, appeared in the UK from Little, Brown; however, the collection never appeared in the United States – until now. Twenty-five years later, the collection of 18 stories is available for American readers for the very first time in this Crippen & Landru collection. Crippen & Landru has published three prior collections of Lovesey’s works, Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose, The Sedgemoor Strangler, and Murder on the Short List.

This new collection shows why Peter Lovesey is one of the masters of the genre’s short form. His pieces range from supernaturally-tinged tales to the gritty tales of middle-class sabotage. The collection also includes “Youdunnit,” the mystery told in second-person where the reader becomes the murderer.

Lovesey includes a new introduction to the collection that touches on the origins of some of the stories as well as the stories’ trajectories once published in the UK.