When it was published in 1928, Dorothy L. Sayers’s “Omnibus of Crime” was surely the greatest anthology of mystery stories to have seen the light of day. It contained 62 stories and 1,177 pages and was a steal even at the hefty price of $3. Spotlighting the significance of this landmark volume, the publisher issued it in a slipcase.

Although subsequently supplanted (in my opinion) by Ellery Queen’s magnificent “101 Years’ Entertainment” (1941), the “Omnibus” remains a stupendous achievement. Included were stories by many of the greatest names in the history of the genre, only a few of whom – Edgar Allan Poe and his detective, C. Auguste Dupin; Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes; E.W. Hornung with Raffles; G.K. Chesterton with Father Brown – remain widely read today. The majority of Sayers’s selections were by names now forgotten to all but the most fanatical of mystery readers: Mrs. Henry Wood, Hedley Barker, J. Storer Clouston, Edgar Jepson, F.A.M. Webster, and a host of other worthies.

Sayers’s greatest contribution to the literature of crime, excepting her own detective, Lord Peter Wimsey, of course, was her lengthy – 38 pages of very small type – introduction to the anthology (the British edition of the anthology, called “Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror,” was bizarrely published byVictor Gollancz without Sayers’s name on the dust jacket). She provided an intelligent history of the detective and mystery story but fell down badly when attempting to predict the future.

She correctly described the modern detective as a new type of hero. It was only with the creation of police departments in France, England, and America around the middle of the 19th century that the general populace began to seek law and order. Before, the search for justice had generally involved the capture of a suspect, his torture, eventual confession, and death. It is not surprising that people and, by extension, readers, sided with such criminals as Robin Hood; government, and those employed by it, were seen as the oppressors.

It would have been impossible, then, for detective stories to be invented with any hope of being read with pleasure. When organized crime fighting entities such as the Surete and Scotland Yard were created, “the detective,” Sayers wrote, “steps into his right place as the protector of the weak – the latest of the popular heroes, the true successor to Roland and Lancelot.”

When she wrote, however, of the three questions posed in a mystery – Who? How? Why? – she was terribly mistaken, opining that “How is at present the one which offers most scope of surprise and ingenuity.” Sayers was against allowing “real human beings” into the detective story, and this very constricted view of what a mystery or detective story could be led her to believe that the genre could never produce great literature. Happily, as time passed, writers ignored the limitations Sayers placed on the form and managed to produce many superb examples of serious literature.

This is all quite clear in the “New Omnibus of Crime” (Oxford University Press, $35, 434 pages), edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert. Far more modest in size than the compendium edited by Sayers (fewer than half as many stories and pages), its editors nonetheless have managed that most remarkable of achievements, covering the essentials with out excess, a meat-and-potatoes meal, not a menu degustation.

Inevitably, the omnibus lacks writers we expect and/or hope to see. This would be true if the book had 100 stories instead of its 27, but I still was disappointed to find no stories by James M. Cain, Cornell Woolrich, the brilliant Stanley Ellin, John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, Roald Dahl, or Agatha Christie (though the agents for the last’s estate are so difficult that the omission may be no fault of the editors).

It is foolish to weep over a missing ruby or two when there is such a treasure chest of diamonds and emeralds. The volume begins, fittingly enough, with a story by Sayers herself, followed by masterworks by Hammett, Chandler, and the underappreciated Fredric Brown. Since both editors (plus both contributing editors, Sue Grafton and Jeffery Deaver) are American, it is not surprising that “A New Omnibus of Crime” favors American authors, with 18 of the 27 contributors being from the United States, compared with a mere half-dozen of the 62 stories in the original).

This was certainly by design, as American authors more wholly reflect the concept of the modern mystery, in which “who” or “how” ride in the back of the bus driven by “why.” In no story is this better illustrated than in Dennis Lehane’s compelling “Running Out of Dog.” How a young man born and raised in a blue-collar part of Boston can write a story so convincingly Southern is beyond my understanding or imagination, so it’s best to simply allow oneself to be captivated by the voices and rhythms of his sad tale.

When a girl is killed, everyone in town knew that the wastrel Blue had done it. When the girl and her husband separated, “you could see the dream come alive in Blue’s eyes, see him allow hope into his heart for the first time in his sorry life. And when hope comes late to a man, it’s quite a dangerous thing. Hope is for the young, the children. Hope in a full-grown man – particularly one with as little acquaintanceship with it or prospect for it as Blue – well, that kind of hope burns as it dies, boils blood white, and leaves something mean behind when it’s done.”

A real Southern writer, Michael Malone, proves Sayers wrong in her assertion that real human beings should not be allowed to populate mystery stories. It is the strength of a single man, and the respect and honor with which he is held by his town, that decides the fate of an actress accused of murdering her husband. The narrator is the man’s son. When he sees her up close for the first time, he is awed.

“She was beautiful,” he writes. “Her eyes were the color of lilacs, but darker than lilacs. And her skin held the light like the inside of a shell. She was not like other pretty women, because the difference was not one of degree.”

A splendid bonus in “A New Omnibus of Crime” is three stories writ 972 1949 1082 1961ten especially for it. Jeffery Deaver, that master of suspense, wrote one, and so did Catherine Aird, but the choicest plum is Alexander McCall Smith’s “He Loved To Go for Drives With His Father.” This gentle, poignant tale with neither a murder nor a mystery is the perfect conclusion to this excellent volume, as well as a finely tuned example of how the mystery story has changed, and grown in the 77 years since the publication of the book that served as the model for this one.

Dorothy L. Sayers, by the way, followed her cornerstone anthology with “The Second Omnibus of Crime” (855 pages) four years later, and “The Third Omnibus of Crime” (816 pages) in 1935, each with 52 stories. If Mr. Hillerman and Ms. Herbert are busily planning sequels, I say bravo, but fatter would be better – words I’ve never considered when looking in the mirror.

Mr. Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached atopenzler@nysun.com.