cover image Once Upon a Crime: Historical Mysteries from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

Once Upon a Crime: Historical Mysteries from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine

. St. Martin's Press, $19.95 (225pp) ISBN 978-0-312-11032-1

Crime throughout the ages is the theme connecting the 13 tales in this often engrossing collection, gathered by the editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine , where each story first appeared . Included are such gems as Steven Saylor's ``The Lemures,'' featuring Gordianus, a ``Detectus,'' or finder, in first century-B.C. Rome, who is called upon to investigate murder by a ghost. In the slight ``A Light on the Road to Woodstock,'' Ellis Peters reveals Brother Cadfael's reasons for entering the monastery, while two other stories, ``Gather Not Thy Rose'' by Miriam Grace Monfredo and ``Death of a Noverint,'' by William Bankier, offer fanciful (maybe) solutions to famous Elizabethan murders. A scorned Russian diplomat in Peking takes terrible revenge on his faithless wife before the Boxer Rebellion in ``Chinoiserie,'' by Helen McCloy, while Florence V. Mayberry examines a fierce lovers' triangle in 1920s Las Vegas in ``Smiling Joe and the Twins.'' (June)