Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Pages: 317
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating:

Synopsis:

Holidays offer us the luxury of getting away from it all. So, in a different way, do detective stories. This collection of vintage mysteries combines both those pleasures. From a golf course at the English seaside to a pension in Paris, and from a Swiss mountain resort to the cliffs of Normandy, this new selection shows the enjoyable and unexpected ways in which crime writers have used summer holidays as a theme.

These fourteen stories range widely across the golden age of British crime fiction. Stellar names from the past are well represented - Arthur Conan Doyle and G. K. Chesterton, for instance - with classic stories that have won acclaim over the decades. The collection also uncovers a wide range of hidden gems: Anthony Berkeley - whose brilliance with plot had even Agatha Christie in raptures - is represented by a story so (undeservedly) obscure that even the British Library does not own a copy. The stories by Phyllis Bentley and Helen Simpson are almost equally rare, despite the success which both writers achieved, while those by H. C. Bailey, Leo Bruce and the little-known Gerald Findler have seldom been reprinted.

Each story is introduced by the editor, Martin Edwards, who sheds light on the authors' lives and the background to their writing.

Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries is, like all the short story collections in the British Library Crime Classics series, edited by Martin Edwards, so it’s the usual spread of stories which includes some well-known ones (Conan Doyle), some standbys for the series (H.C. Bailey) and a couple of lesser-known ones, including one where the author is virtually unknown — or was at the time of publication.

For someone interested in crime fiction in general, then, it has the usual interest of being a survey of mystery stories around this theme, etc, etc. I must admit it was far from being a favourite for me, not helped by the fact that one of the stories (the one from Anthony Berkeley, if I recall) has been used in one of the other collections before or since (not sure which one, but I know the story, and that’s the only reason I would).

There are some fun stories in this collection, don’t get me wrong (I liked the atmosphere in “Where Is Mr Manetot?” for instance), but overall it didn’t grab me.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)