I might a little late in discovering this, but I just found an interview online with librarian Gary Warren Neibuhr, author of several landmark reference works in world of mystery fiction. It’s at Murderati and dated 12/29/07, but it can hardly be considered out of date.

Gary is the author of A Reader’s Guide to the Private Eye Novel (Reader’s Guides to Mystery Novels) (G. K. Hall, 1993) and Make Mine a Mystery: A Reader’s Guide to Mystery and Detective Fiction (Genreflecting Advisory Series) (Libraries Unlimited, 2003). I think both titles are probably self-explanatory, and if you don’t own them yourself, please make sure that you live close to a library that does. If they don’t, bug them until they do.

Gary’s most recent book is Read ‘Em Their Writes: A Handbook for Mystery and Crime Fiction Book Discussions (Libraries Unlimited, 2006). If the title doesn’t tell you exactly what the book’s about, it’s a self-help guide in helping you organize your own mystery discussion group, how to get participants, select titles, and so on. The interview concentrates most heavily on this, of course, but he talks about the other two books, too, as well as his own personal interests in mystery fiction. (Primarily private eye novels, it is not too surprising to learn: he has 6000 of them, he says, in his basement.)

One of the most popular articles that ever appeared on the original Mystery*File website was written by Gary about private eye Honey West, about whom if you know little, you should go read it, and right now.