The Washington Post described Peter Lovesey’s crime fiction as “ingenious … irresistible … wickedly clever.” In “The Sedgemoor Strangler,” a serial killer leaves a naked corpse among the reeds, and a young waitress gradually comes to suspect that she is the next victim. Another serial killer terrifies a nineteenth-century housewife in the shocking, twisting tale of “Dr Death.” Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson investigate the stealing of the Christmas Star in “The Four Wise Men.” “The Amorous Corpse” is one of the finest recent impossible crime detective stories — a robbery is committed by a man proven by unimpeachable evidence to have been dead several hours earlier. In “The Problem of Stateroom 10,” the famous mystery writer Jacques Futrelle investigates a murder as the Titanic goes down.

Full of wit, irony, tricky plots, and an engaging sense of place and time, The Sedgemoor Strangler is an extraordinary collection of sixteen extraordinary stories.