Just Finished Reading: Murder by the Book – Mysteries for Bibliophiles edited by Martin Edwards (FP: 2021) [304pp] 

Collections of short stories are a great way to ‘try before you buy’ especially when they’re part of a much bigger series of books such as the British Library Crime Classics (BLCC). Before this volume I’d only read a single book from this series (Mystery in White – A Christmas Crime Story by J Jefferson Farjeon) back in 2015 so continuing with it is LONG overdue, I think. The BLCC books cover the Golden era of British crime novels and rescue lost classics and lost authors that are, unfortunately, no longer in print. I think there’s over 100 of these books now in print (I have about 15 in a stack) and although I won’t get around to reading all of them, I’m going to make a stab [lol] of getting a goodly few under my belt. 

I thought I’d start my rest reading (after the failed start in 2015) with something pretty obvious – mysteries related to books. I mean, how could I turn THAT down. Running to 16 stories from the likes of A A Milne (yes, he wrote mysteries too and not just Winnie the Poo), Edmund Crispin and Ngaio Marsh these were stories of frustrated authors, obnoxious or difficult publishers (it’s amazing how many publishers come to a particularly grisly end in detective fiction!) or mysterious rare books that MUST be had by collectors no matter the cost. Most short story collections are pretty hit and miss affairs, but I was impressed here by the majority of the stories. In fact, I think only one of the tales disappointed me – and that was only because the clue was an obscure reference (at the time I presume) which I already knew. My particular favourites where the first story A Lesson in Crime (1933) by GDH and M Cole where an author has a personal demonstration of a perfect crime by a disgruntled reader, A Slice of Bad Luck (1939) by Nicolas Blake where an Assassin’s Club dinner serves up murder along with the port and cigars, Malice Domestic (1946) by Philip MacDonald where a married couple seemingly view each other with murderous intent (and where for a while I suspected the family dog was the, presumably unintentional, murderer), We Know You’re Busy Writing (1969) by Edmund Crispin where an author will murder for some time alone to write his book and, finally, Chapter and Verse (1973) by Ngaio Marsh where a mysterious old Bible from New Zealand causes quite a stir in an English village. 

All in all, I was very impressed by both the range and the quality of the stories presented here. Not only shall I be looking forward to longer works by some of those authors in the coming months/years, but I’ll almost be dipping into other themed short story collections in this series too. Recommended for all lovers of Golden Age British crime stories and anyone interested in bookish mysteries. MUCH more to come from the BLCC collection.