SOURCE: Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” In The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Howard Haycraft, pp. 71-109. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946.

In the following essay, originally published in 1928 as the introduction to the anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery, and Horror (published in the U.S. as the first Omnibus of Crime, 1929), Sayers provides an overview of the history and major developments of the crime-mystery-detective story.

The art of self-tormenting is an ancient one, with a long and honourable literary tradition. Man, not satisfied with the mental confusion and unhappiness to be derived from contemplating the cruelties of life and the riddle of the universe, delights to occupy his leisure moments with puzzles and bugaboos. The pages of every magazine and newspaper swarm with cross-words, mathematical tricks, puzzle-pictures, enigmas, acrostics, and detective-stories, as also with stories of the...