THE AMERICAN DETECTIVE: An Illustrated History <i> by Jeff Siegel (Taylor Publishing Co.: 168 pp.; $26.95).</i>

If there is a longer-lived and more durable American literary genre than the mystery, it does not come quickly to mind. Devotee Siegel, a former journalist for the Dallas Times Herald, has heroically attempted to squeeze the entire business, including film and television spinoffs, into one tidy, well-illustrated package. Not afraid to say where he stands, Siegel speaks out forcefully for Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon” (“the finest accomplishment in the history of detective fiction”), gets understandably passionate about the underrated Coffin Ed Johnson and Grave Digger Jones novels of Chester Himes, and even finds kind words for Ellery Queen and Charlie Chan. Most fun are the book’s peripheral materials, for instance a Gumshoe Hall of Fame, a list of “The Ten Silliest Cop Shows in Television History” and a Gumshoe Timeline, which lets us know that both the death of Raymond Chandler and the cancellation of “Dragnet” by NBC took place in 1959. If that’s not a mystery, what is?