100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction is a response to the growing attention paid to genre fiction in schools and universities. Since Edgar Allan Poe invented the modern mystery story in the mid-19th century, the number of authors writing in this field has steadily grown, as have the appetites of growing numbers of readers. This collection surveys 100 of the writers who have made the most lasting contributions to the genre and includes such major figures as Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ellery Queen, and Rex Stout.