LeRoy Lad Panek, 1943–2021.

Panek's last book

LeRoy Lad Panek, a longtime professor at McDaniel College (MD) and a distinguished mystery scholar, died November 5 of pancreatic cancer. His obituary was published in the Baltimore Sun. 

His last book is the newly published Nineteenth Century Detective Fiction: An Analytical History. His other works include the following:

  • Before Sherlock Holmes: How Magazines and Newspapers Invented the Detective Story

  • After Sherlock Holmes: The Evolution of British and American Detective Stories 1891–1914

  • The American Police Novel: A History (Edgar nominee)

  • Early American Detective Stories: An Anthology (ed. with Mary Bendel-Simso)

• The Essential Elements of the Detective Story, 1820–1891 (coauthored with Bendel-Simso)

• Introduction to the Detective Story (Edgar winner)

• The Origins of the American Detective Story

• Reading Early Hammett: A Critical Study of the Fiction Prior to The Maltese Falcon

• Watteau's Shepherds: The Detective Novel in Britain 1914–1940 (Edgar nominee)

Panek's Westminster Detective Library (a project with Bendel-Simso) is an invaluable online repository of short detective works published in the United States prior to 1891.