Cyanide in the Sun and Other Stories of Summertime Crime

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating:

Synopsis:

“All about them, happy holiday-makers were strolling and laughing, evidently oblivious of the prevailing perils of their chosen resort...”

A cold case of poisonings heats up at a quaint guest house. A string of suspicious murders follows a crime writer’s tour bus. Two seedy stowaways uncover an infamous smuggling ring. Everyone needs a break now and then, but sometimes getting away can be murder.

In this new anthology, Martin Edwards presents a jam-packed travel-case of eighteen classic mysteries, featuring short stories from crime fiction legends such as Christianna Brand, Anthony Berkeley and Celia Fremlin alongside rare finds revived from the British Library archives. Including intriguing notes on the stories and their authors, this volume is your ticket to a thrilling journey from 1920s seaside skulduggery through to calamity in 1980s suburbia – perfect for armchair travelling or your own summer getaway.

Cyanide in the Sun and Other Stories of Summertime Crime is, as usual, edited by Martin Edwards and collects a range of “classic” crime stories (where “classic” means mostly within a certain period of crime fiction, rather than “well known and has stood the test of time”, etc), this time themed around holidays.

There’s a surprising number of short ones in this volume, which makes it speed by quite a bit, and I feel like there was less reliance on the same few obvious names (though of course Christianna Brand, Anthony Berkeley and Julian Symons do appear), maybe. Perhaps the net is being cast a bit wider now, with so many collections already out there.

As usual, there were one or two I didn’t care for, but it’s an interesting collection as a whole.

Rating: 3/5