Posted September 18, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries
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”)
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery, short stories
Posted August 23, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Odd Flamingo
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: Rose has news for Celia â she is due to have a baby by Celiaâs husband, Humphrey. Soon after, the seeds of scandal bear a criminal fruit when a body is discovered in Little Venice along with Roseâs handbag. Celia drafts in an old flame, Will, to root out the truth from suspicions of murder and blackmail, as the evidence starts to converge on the patrons and strange goings-on of the seedy Chelsea club, âThe Odd Flamingoâ. First published in 1954, this was one of two gritty and atmospheric crime novels written by the accomplished childrenâs author Nina Bawden.
I knew of Nina Bawden because I read Carrie’s War in university — I think for the children’s literature class I took? I hadn’t expected to see a book by her from the British Library Crime Classics series, that’s for sure.
The Odd Flamingo turns out to be a noir-ish and rather grubby story, in which few (if any) people are genuine or trustworthy. Bawden carefully gives us the hero worship the main character has for his friend Humphrey, and his idealisation of a young girl, Rose, who seems fresh and innocent… and then carefully spends the whole book tearing it down.
It’s pretty weird as a mystery/crime novel, because the main character doesn’t really get very far in solving anything, and the interest (depending on your tastes) is more on the character studies. I found it overall pretty unpleasant, and while I could admire the craft, it wasn’t what I usually hope for in classic crime. (Which is fair enough for the series, to be clear: even “classic crime” as a concept contains multitudes!)
It’s an interesting read, but not one I enjoyed in and of itself.
Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery, Nina Bawden
Posted August 17, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Judas Window
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 269
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: Avory Hume is found stabbed to death with an arrow - in a study with bolted steel shutters and a heavy door locked from the inside. In the same room James Caplon Answell lies unconscious, his clothes disordered as though from a struggle, his fingerprints on the damning arrow.
Here is the unique Carter Dickson "impossible situation" - yet the great, explosive Sir Henry Merrivale gets down to serious sleuthing and at last startles the crowd in the Old Bailey with a reconstruction of the crime along logical, convincing lines.
H.M. in his most exciting case - an original, unconventional mystery, with a rich story background and a thrilling trial scene.
Every time the British Library Crime Classics series republish one of John Dickson Carr’s mysteries (under that name or as Carter Dickson), the intro hyperbolically refers to it as one of the greatest locked room mysteries ever, etc etc. The Judas Window was a genuinely fun one though, with one of the least goofy explanations of how the locked room wasn’t actually impenetrable, and it’s one of the books in John Dickson Carr’s oeuvre that I got on with best so far (not always having been much of a fan).
It certainly helps that much of it is courtroom drama, with the larger-than-life H.M. defending the prisoner in court, with a few sensations along the way. The character of Mary Hume is pretty amazing, and a rare one in crime fiction: having allowed a lover to take erotic photos of her and then been blackmailed about them, she comes out in court to take all the power out of it by forthrightly admitting the whole thing. I feel like this doesn’t get as much spotlight as it deserves in the story, because it’s a heck of a power play.
The puzzle works out nicely, with my only quibble being that I didn’t think the actual culprit made a lot of sense without some more clues or build-up. But that wasn’t so much the point of the story, I think, so it wasn’t a huge downside. Overall, I really liked this one.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, Carter Dickson, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
Posted August 13, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Serpents in Eden: Countryside Crimes
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 276
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: 'The lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.... Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.' - Sherlock Holmes
Many of the greatest British crime writers have explored the possibilities of crime in the countryside in lively and ingenious short stories. Serpents in Eden celebrates the rural British mystery by bringing together an eclectic mix of crime stories written over half a century. From a tale of poison-pen letters tearing apart a village community to a macabre mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle, the stories collected here reveal the dark truths hidden in an assortment of rural paradises. Among the writers included here are such major figures as G. K. Chesterton and Margery Allingham, along with a host of lesser-known discoveries whose best stories are among the unsung riches of the golden age of British crime fiction between the two world wars.
As ever, the British Library Crime Classics series editor, Martin Edwards, put together a spread of stories by different authors and from slightly different periods for Serpents in Eden, themed around mysteries set in the countryside. Some of them are better than others, but overall I thought it was a pretty strong collection.
A highlight for me was the R. Austin Freeman story; he’s always so thorough, and while in this one I had an idea what Thorndyke was looking for, it was interesting to see the process unfold. At least as far as the detecting part goes — the spy stuff was a little less interesting to me, but that just provides the motive, and not much of the actual mystery part.
For some reason this one did take me longer to finish than I’d have guessed, so I guess it was a bit slow/the majority of the stories were quite long, but it’s not like I minded that.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery, short stories
Posted June 30, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Cyanide in the Sun and Other Stories of Summertime Crime
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 288
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: âAll about them, happy holiday-makers were strolling and laughing, evidently oblivious of the prevailing perils of their chosen resort...â
A cold case of poisonings heats up at a quaint guest house. A string of suspicious murders follows a crime writerâs 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 â 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
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Martin Edwards, mystery, short stories
Posted June 6, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Cat and Mouse
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 255
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: 
Synopsis: Girls Together magazine agony-aunt 'Mrs Friendly-wise', aka Katinka Jones, finds herself at a loose end in Swansea, and decides to pay a surprise visit to one of the magazine's regular correspondents, 'Amista'. But reaching the address a strange house perched atop a mountain which matches all of the descriptions in the letters nobody has even heard of 'Amista'. As Katinka begins to fall for the dashing master of the house, Carleon, more weird mysteries emerge and the plucky Detective Inspector Chucky joins the search for the truth in this self-consciously lurid mystery-melodrama; a rollicking cavalcade of Brand's signature twists and turns.
The first of Brandâs non-Cockrill stories to join the Crime Classics, and the sixth Brand novel in total, a series bestseller. A playful and experimental novel in which Brand sets out to combine Gothic melodrama with her signature style of mystery complete with astonishing twists and bombshell clues hiding in plain sight.
I’m not a great lover of Christianna Brand’s work, generally, and I’ve liked her books less as I’ve read more of them, somehow. So perhaps it’s not too surprising that I actively loathed the latest reissue of her work by the British Library Crime Classics series, Cat and Mouse.
As far as I can tell, it’s less intended as one of her straight-out mystery novels, and more written as a parody of dramatic gothic mysteries; it reminds me a little of Ethel Lina White’s work. And it’s excruciatingly awful to read. The main character is humiliated at every turn, and makes multiple wild accusations while acting — sorry, but this is the best word I can come up with — hysterically, there’s a romance that makes absolutely no sense… arrghhh, it just drove me nuts. I hated it.
The one good thing I can say for it is that it did genuinely feel like it was set in Wales, and evoked that perfectly.
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, Christianna Brand, crime, mystery
Posted May 20, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Metropolitan Mysteries: A Casebook of London's Detectives
Genres: Crime,
Mystery,
Short Stories Pages: 316
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: Lord Peter Wimsey reads murder in the minutiae of a Bloomsbury kitchen. Dr. Gideon Fell unravels a locked-room mystery from a flat in Chelsea. Superintendent Aldgate cracks the case of the body atop Nelsonâs Column.
The streets of London have been home to many great detectives since the days of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, with some of the best authors in the genre taking to the short story form to pit their sleuths against crimes ranging from murders on the Tube to heists from the capitalâs finest jewellers.
Featuring a roster of Scotland Yardâs meticulous best, a cohort of daring doctors and a cadre of characterful private investigators, this new selection by Martin Edwards includes eighteen vintage mystery stories from a period between 1908 and 1963 to showcase the cityâs most compelling classic cases.
With contributions by Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr and Dorothy L. Sayers along with rare finds by Raymond Postgate, J. Jefferson Farjeon and many more, this anthology invites you to join some of the greatest detectives ever written on their perilous trail through Londonâs darker underside.
Metropolitan Mysteries is another anthology edited by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics series, this time themed around London’s fictional detectives. Some of the famous ones are here, of course — Wimsey, Holmes — but some more obscure ones as well. As usual with this series’ anthologies, it’s an interesting survey of the “classic” crime fiction (though I think “classic” is a bit tired and ill-defined when it comes to this series: Golden/Silver Age would be a better descriptor, perhaps).
Also as usual with these anthologies, I think it’s greater than the sum of its parts. I’d read some of the stories before, but some of the others are of surprising interest, and altogether it’s a bit like a series of taster dishes for different authors and slightly different phases of crime fiction.
There are some stories that are better than others (I thought the Allingham one was pretty weakly related, just included just to shoehorn Campion into it, just barely), but as a whole it’s fun.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, mystery, short stories
Posted May 16, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Scandalize My Name
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 240
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: One the eve of Elaine Southey's 21st birthday, Ivan Sweet has been found dead in his flat in the basement of the Southeys' historic north London home. A slick charmer to some of the tenants and a loathsome young scoundrel to others his death doesn't draw out many tears among the house's residents and neighbours. And yet the sordid truth starts to seep into the heart of their small community a murder is living among them, and who's to say when they might strike again? The shrewd Oxford man Superintendent Paul Grainger finds himself faced with a small circle of suspects whose connections and hidden motives heap complexity upon complexity in this tightly wrought mystery, shot through with a chilling touch of the macabre.
Fiona Sinclair’s Scandalize My Name feels very much on the cusp between “Golden Age” styles of mystery fiction and the more modern gritty crime. There’s a detailed and explicit autopsy scene, which is definitely not something I expected from something in this series, but there’s still a sense of an individual police officer going about the normal beat. Grainger’s not a world away from Lorac’s Macdonald at all, they’re very much in the same mode, even if the story has a lot more gruesome detail.
Overall, I think this one didn’t give enough clues to tie the solution of the mystery in with the rest. There was a rather sudden and very dramatic denouement which revealed the killer, but it didn’t really feel like the plot had got there yet — the denouement revealed the killer, rather than the detective.
There were some interesting character portraits, but I think it mostly felt a bit thin — maybe, as the introduction by Martin Edwards says, because there’s too many characters introduced and used as POV characters, and too much swapping around between them. That said, that doesn’t feel too unusual for a mystery story.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, British Library Crime Classics, crime, Fiona Sinclair, mystery
Posted May 10, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Not To Be Taken
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: A classic case of the apparent suicide that proves to be murder. John Waterhouse's death certificate gives cause of death as gastric ulcers, but when his brother insists on the body being exhumed so that a post mortem can be carried out, it proves the case that poison has been at work. Will Douglas Sewell, who watched his good friend die, be able to use his knowledge of those concerned to unravel the clues and uncover the murderer?
Anthony Berkeley’s books can be a bit hit or miss for me, apparently: there’s one I quickly gave up on for bizarre misogynistic shenanigans, and others that I really liked. Not to be Taken is one of the latter: it’s a slow-moving, contemplative one, a fair-play mystery very deliberately set up for the audience to guess, because it was originally a competition!
The female characters are mostly handled with respect, except the hypochondriac Angela, but I think that’s mostly because she’s a hypochondriac, and it’s basically about two microns away from being “hysteria”. (Or you could view her as deliberately manipulative, and not really a hypochondriac — which is a mental illness which deserves sympathy and treatment — but I’m not sure she’s meant to be doing it deliberately.)
The main character, the accidental detective, isn’t an amazing detective, but nor is he a completely dim “Watson” type, which I found interesting as well. For Berkeley’s purposes in writing a solveable mystery, he has to have enough intelligence to be observant, and it’s clear he’s rather underestimated by the culprit — while not really being on their intellectual level, perhaps.
The edition from British Library Crime Classic includes the final chapter (presumably not originally published with it, since it contains the solution) and a report by Anthony Berkeley on the submissions for the contest. It’s interesting to me that nobody understood the full solution (and I wouldn’t have either), considering that people so often complain about mysteries being totally predictable.
It was a playful time for mystery fiction, and that’s always really fascinating to read.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: Anthony Berkeley, book reviews, books, crime, mystery
Posted April 5, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Ten Teacups
Genres: Crime,
Mystery Pages: 256
Series: British Library Crime Classics Rating: Synopsis: "There will be ten teacups at number 4, Berwick Terrace, W. 8, on Wednesday, July 31, at 5 p.m. precisely. The presence of the Metropolitan Police is respectfully requested."
Writing as Carter Dickson, the master of the locked room mystery John Dickson Carr returns to the Crime Classics series, pitching his series amateur detective Henry Merrivale against a seemingly watertight mystery: after the police are sent a note warning them about a forthcoming crime, a man is shot in a room on the top floor of a Kensington townhouse â a house watched from all sides during the murder. Surely nobody could have gotten in or out? And yet the man is dead, and just like the last time the police received a note like this, there are ten teacups set out at the scene of the crime. H.M. is drawn to unravel this bizarre crime, as the mysterious significance of the ten teacups in murders past and present pushes the police to their limits.
Carter Dickson (AKA John Dickson Carr) was one of the masters of “impossible mysteries”, and to some extent your enjoyment of his work will depend on much you enjoy that genre. I’m not a huge fan, and I previously found Carr’s work frustrating, so even though I’ve come round to some appreciation of it, I found The Ten Teacups a bit frustrating.
The thing that gets me is that they’re always so contrived, with such tight constraints for them to function properly. And this book posits not just one impossible crime, but two. I won’t go too much into the details, but it really requires so much fine-tuning of murder that it always feels artificial to me. I did like the practice of footnoting back the pages where you can find the clues, though — or at least, I found it interesting as a convention.
There is one really macabre moment when you realise that someone has made a corpse into a chair to hide it, and is sitting on the corpse. Just. Yipes. There’s some genuine atmosphere in that portion of the story.
On another note, I found the portrayal of the Welsh character a little discomforting. Perhaps the aspect of him being wild/savage/atavistic wasn’t meant to be correlated with his Welshness, but I suspect it was, and that’s… just weird and unpleasant in a book from 1937. You’d have thought the Welsh would be seen as properly human by then, surely.
Not a favourite of Carr’s work for me, for sure, though your mileage is likely to vary: apparently this is regularly voted one of the best impossible mysteries of all time!
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Carter Dickson, crime, John Dickson Carr, mystery
