The field of detective fiction is vast, and "The Oxford Book of Detective Stories" brings together fiction from around the world to show how different nationalities have imposed their own stamp on the genre. As well as English and American stories from acknowledged masters such as Ellery Queen, Dashiell Hammett, and Agatha Christie, the anthology includes stories by Simenon, Conan Doyle, Sarah Paretsky and Ian Rankin and roams across Europe and further afield to embrace Japan, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Argentina, Czechoslovakia and other countries. Women detectives, police procedurals, the amateur sleuth, locked-room mysteries are all here, and in her introduction Patricia Craig examines the figure of the detective in international literature.