This is a collection of articles, reviews, interviews and essays by the 1990 Cartier Diamond Dagger award winner - critic and writer, Julian Symons. Following an introduction entitled The Crime Story Yesterday, Today, Tommorrow, this book offers a collection of Symons's writing on crime fiction from Britain, the United States and elsewhere, plus a section on real life stories, such as The Hiss Affair and the Yorkshire Ripper. Authors that come under Symons's microscope include Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dick Francis, Len Deighton and John Le Carre, and from the United States, pieces about Edgar Allan Poe, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain and Martin Cruz Smith.