Davis (More Deadly Than the Male, editor) makes a welcome addition to early English detective fiction anthologies. Unlike scholars who date the birth of the genre to Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Davis starts with an earlier short story, "The Secret Cell" by Poe's nemesis, William Evans Burton. That tale remains enjoyable today, with its dramatic account of the search for a missing 17-year-old servant, who stood to inherit a fortune from her employer. Other solid entries will also be new to many, such as an excerpt from the pseudonymous Charles Felix's The Notting Hill Mystery, an epistolary novel about a woman who supposedly drank a fatal dose of acid while sleepwalking. Davis's decision to excerpt novels doesn't always work: The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Phantom of the Opera creator Gaston Leroux doesn't deserve to be spoiled by a section from its denouement

Secret cell / William Evans Burton -- Mystery of Marie Roget / Edgar Allan Poe -- Detective police / Charles Dickens -- Trail of the serpent (extract) / Mary Elizabeth Braddon -- Notting hill mystery (extract) / Charles Felix -- Mystery of orcival (extract) / Emile Gaboriau -- Mr. Policeman and the cook / Wilkie Collins -- Lenton croft robberies / Arthur Morrison -- Gentlemen and players and the return match / E.W. Hornung Secret of the fox hunger / William le Querux -- Superfluous finger / Jacques Futrelle -- Mystery of the yellow room (extract) / Gaston Leroux -- Man with the nailed shoes / R. Austin Freeman -- Ninescore mystery / Baroness Orczy -- Scientific cracksman / Arthur B. Reeve -- Coin of Dionysius / Ernest Bramah