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: ![](Images/cover00187.jpeg)
  
  THE DEADLY DOWAGER
  
  EDWIN GREENWOOD
  
    
    
    
    
  
   _with a new introduction by_
  
  MARK VALENTINE
  
    
    
    
  
  VALANCOURT BOOKS
  
   _Dedication: To M because she laughed_
  
    
  
   _The Deadly Dowager_ by Edwin Greenwood
  
  First published (as _Skin and Bone_ ) by Skeffington & Son in 1934
  
  First U.S. edition published by Doubleday, Doran in 1935
  
  First Valancourt Books edition 2016
  
    
  
  Introduction copyright © 2016 by Mark Valentine
  
  This edition copyright © 2016 by Valancourt Books
  
    
  
  Published by Valancourt Books, Richmond, Virginia
  
  http://www.valancourtbooks.com
  
    
  
   _Cover_ : A reproduction of the dust jacket of the 1935 first edition.
  
    
  
  Set in Dante MT
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
  The Nineteen Thirties novelist Edwin Greenwood (1895-1939) was the author of
  six lively and farcical crime novels, characterised by his exuberant
  imagination and witty repartee. His first book, _Skin and Bone_ (1934), which
  had the better title of _The Deadly Dowager_ in the U.S.A., had a for