Coming from Walker and Bloomsbury in 2011.

This is my assignment to myself in the second volume for my new Connoisseur’s Collection series for Bloomsbury:

Create the finest anthology of Victorian detective stories that has ever existed, period. Take your time and get it right. For years, drawing upon decades of reading in the genre, I have been compiling a shortlist of gems in the field.

These clever, atmospheric, and suspenseful stories won’t be chosen from another line-up of the usual suspects, as so many anthologies are. The London Train will gather the finest adventures among private and police detectives from the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth. You will hunt down felons and decipher puzzles with such wildly different characters as Ebenezer Gryce, Loveday Brooke, November Joe, Dora Myrl, Martin Hewitt, Latimer Field, Deputy Parr, and many other investigators—including two teenagers, a girl and a boy, who in their separate adventures helped pave the way for Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. Will Sherlock Holmes be on board? Yes, but not in one of the usual stories; the same for Father Brown.

Stay tuned for this wonderful fat anthology in 2011.