As part of the enbon boom, the craze for mass-produced, one-yen-per-volume series of literary works that swept through the publishing industry shortly after the Great Kanto Earthquake, several major publishing houses marketed various "complete works" series [zenshû] in detective fiction [tantei shôsetsu]. By the early 1930s, most of the major publishers in Tokyo - including Hakubunkan, Kaizôsha, Heibonsha, and Shinchôsha - came up with their own zenshû of detective fiction. How could these obviously mass-produced zenshû, which lacked any "one-of-a-kind" mystique, appeal to consumers as must-have items? Owning rather than borrowing a work of detective fiction would have been counterintuitive because of the genre's highly disposable nature, so why would there be a market for such series that would have been considered collectibles? This paper examines the aura created by the zenshû label and the effect that this particular rubric had upon the content of such collected works. It also investigates the additional functions of detective fiction zenshû beyond conveying the solution to a whodunit. To own a zenshû meant to symbolically possess the total knowledge of the genre or theme that the series claimed to represent. The label implied that texts selected for inclusion possessed the essence of the genre to a greater degree than the omitted titles. I argue that the onslaught of zenshû that purported to collect masterpieces of detective fiction actually diluted the definition of the genre, and caused its proponents to question the definition and nature of detective fiction itself.