- Title: Department of Dead Ends: 14 Detective Stories
- Author: Roy Vickers
- Received from Paperback Swap
- Started: 2/3/2012
- Finished: 2/14/2012
I've been waiting to get this one for months, maybe a year. I'd heard about it from either a newspaper, or maybe the magazine The Week, or possibly even an online discussion group. I can't remember, but those are usually the places I hear about some slightly more obsure books that sound interesting. This one was really entertaining, so called "inverted" detective stories where you see or have the crime as it happened described to you (similar to a Columbo episode), find out why Scotland Yard couldn't solve it, and then months or so later it ends up at the Department of Dead Ends. It's from this department that dumb luck (often from another case) leads to clues that solve the original mystery.
These stories were short and really fun to read. I only wish there were more than 14 of them in the rather short collection.