With the arrival of Halfway House by Ellery Queen I now have a collection of 1,000 mystery novels so I thought I would share some statistics with you.
By Author
My top ten authors are:
Georges Simenon – 75 – all the Maigret novels in new translations by Penguin
Agatha Christie – 66 – all of her mystery novels written under her own name
John Dickson Carr – 52 – including 17 as by Carter Dickson
Erle Stanley Gardner – 33
Ellery Queen – 32
Michael Innes – 31
Brian Flynn – 26
Freeman Wills Crofts – 25
Andrea Camilleri – 23
Paul Halter – 18 – all of his novels so far translated into English by Locked Room International
Between them that is a total of 381.
232 authors are represented in total of whom I have just a single book from 113 of them.
By date of publication
They range from The Notting Hill Mystery (1862) to The Red Death Murders (2022) by Jim Noy and I have at least one book for every year from 1922 to 2022 apart from 1998.
By decade:
1860s – 2
1870s – 1
1880s – 3
1890s – 2
1900s – 7
1910s – 5
1920s – 58
1930s – 280
1940s – 193
1950s – 155
1960s – 94
1970s – 52
1980s – 32
1990s – 36
2000s – 27
2010s – 46
2020s – 2
The most for any single year is 34 from 1938, which includes classics such as The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake, The Crooked Hinge by John Dickson Carr, Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie, Antidote to Venom by Freeman Wills Crofts, The Judas Window by Carter Dickson, Lament for a Maker by Michael Innes, and Death from a Top Hat by Clayton Rawson – a golden year from a golden decade.
To Be Read Pile
103 of the 1,000 remain to be read, including 20 by Brian Flynn,13 by Erle Stanley Gardner, 9 by Michael Innes, and 7 by Andrea Camilleri . I’m currently reading “Rex v Anne Bickerton by Sydney Fowler.
The Future
I’m sure some of my collection will be culled in the future. I don’t expect to like some that I’ve picked up for my 100 Greatest Literary Detectives project. And will I ever choose to re-read Photo Finish by Ngaio Marsh?
But in the short-term the number will increase as I ordered two more books this morning!
What do your collections look like?
Countdown John's Christie Journal 
Mine collection is a lot smaller than yours. I’ve got about 250 books. 35 Carrs, 10 Halters, 10 Brands, 6 Christies. I’ve got about 50% before 1950 and 50% after.
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My GAD collection is a bit over a 1000 titles. Since I have been following for circa the last five years your blog and that of others (e.g., TomCat, Jim, John, Ben, Curtis, Kate, Steve, Brad, Nick, Aidan, etc.), I have been curating the best of the best ones from blogger recommendations. With so many great books now and many still to read, I have set the bar very high before I will buy more.
I have many from Christie, Carr, Halter, Queen, Brand, etc. as well as obscure, rare books (e.g., I now am reading Reginald Davis’ “The Crowing Hen” after a recommendation from John over at Pretty Sinister). The titles are approximately 80% before 1950 and 20% after.
Thanks to you and the others for the reviews and recommendations.
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I counted a paltry 716 mystery books. I was very inconsistent with non-fiction, counting some and not counting others. And I would say there are about ten volumes that contain multiple novels, but I always counted them as one book. (So I have all six of the Biggers Chans, but in only two volumes.) At any rate, it’s far less than 1000, so mazel tov!!!
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A quick totting up this morning reveals that I possess 807 crime and mystery novels and 191 short story collections for a total of 998 physical books — however my Crofts and Carr collections contain multiple cases of certain books, so that’s not than 998 individual titles (and since I have some twofer volumes like the Coachwhip Roger Scarlet books, it’s not even 998 tomes…man, this gets confusing quickly).
Plus 232 on Kindle. But I don’t know if we’re counting them.
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Okay, no, discard these numbers; they are…inaccurate.
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