They were writers - short stories, articles, plays, anecdotes - and they lunched together daily at a large table in New York's Algonquin Hotel. The members of the Algonquin Round Table included some of the best-known literary names in New York during the twenties and thirties - people like Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Robert Benchley and S. J. Perelman, writers who contributed to the then-new New Yorker magazine. They traded witty barbs. And - to get to the point - they even wrote some mystery stories.
Now, mystery writer, publisher and scholar Otto Penzler has edited an anthology of some of those mysteries. It's called "The Vicious Circle: Mystery and Crime Stories by Members of the Algonquin Round Table," and it's the subject of my review this week on the Classic Mysteries podcast. Give it a listen. The stories include broad farce, satires of other writers, character studies, some straight detective tales, and some truly chilling crime stories. Most of the writers of that era have been largely forgotten; this book may give you some idea of their talent.
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