title: The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing
author:  Rosemary Herbert 
description: <B>Penzler Pick, <a href="/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/33102/${0}">April 2000</a>:</B> Over the years, there have been quite a few reference books in the mystery genre arranged as dictionaries, encyclopedias, companions, and so on. (I coauthored two of them, so I know what goes into their production.) Rosemary Herbert's <i>Companion</i> differs from many others in at least two ways: first, she did not write it but rather edited the work of numerous well-known mystery scholars and academics, each of whom presumably has some expertise in the subjects they wrote about; and second, there are as many articles devoted to umbrella subjects (eccentrics, elderly sleuths, English village milieu, and escapism, to open the book at random) as to authors and characters. It is an interesting way to arrange a reference book and more fun to read than the potted author biographies in similar works, but it seems to be less useful as a reference tool than those works.
zlib_text: _About the Author_
  
  Before turning to crime, **A.M. CASTLE** had a long career as a feature writer
  on national newspapers including the _Daily Express_ , _The Times_ and _The
  Daily Telegraph_. She grew up in south London and, after a stint in Brussels,
  she is back where she belongs. As well as writing psychological thrillers, she
  also writes cosy mysteries as Alice Castle. She is married with two children,
  two stepchildren and two cats.
  
  The Perfect Widow
  
    
    
  
  A.M. CASTLE
  
    
    
  
  HQ
  
  An imprint of HarperCollins _Publishers_ Ltd.
  
  1 London Bridge Street
  
  London SE1 9GF
  
  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019
  
  Copyright © A.M. Castle 2019
  
  A.M. Castle asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this
  work.
  
  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
  
  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents
  portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
  actual persons, living or dead, e