"The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books"

Short version of this review: if you enjoy traditional mysteries - especially British traditional mysteries from before, during and after the Golden Age - you must have this book.

Now for some details about The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards. The book, meant as a companion and guide to the British Library Crime Classics series, will be published at the beginning of August in the United States by Poisoned Pen Press, which provided me with an advance copy for this review. It is already available in the U. K. The book is the subject of today's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.

Let’s start by discussing some things which The Story of Classic Crimes is NOT. It’s not a list of the 100 best mysteries ever written – I’m not sure why anyone would even bother trying to compile such a list (though they do!) and I doubt that any two readers would come up with identical lists. It’s not a list of 100 mysteries you should read before you die. It’s neither a listing of 100 books that will almost certainly be familiar to its readers nor one that contains only obscure and hidden gems.

What it IS, is a book with far more than 100 mysteries to discuss, augmented by a list of 100 mysteries which were influential enough, or interesting enough, or important enough to have a significant impact on the genre and on the audience. The author and list-compiler is Martin Edwards, a mystery writer himself as well as a mystery historian and the president of England's prestigious Detection Club.  The book is divided into 24 chapters, presenting the history of the genre in a more-or-less orderly examination of how the classic mystery story has evolved, with plenty of examples. Thus, for example, the book opens by looking back at the earliest detective fiction, as it began to appear from early authors, such as Poe, through Doyle and his contemporaries and rivals. The next chapter looks at the birth of the Golden Age. There is a chapter on the Great Detectives – that’s capitalized, by the way, Edwards means “the Great Detectives” with an emphasis on "great." We see how some authors began playing a game with their readers, challenging them to beat the fictional detective to a solution, providing them with clues of varying degrees of fairness. There are chapters devoted to the different types of mysteries that evolved –miraculous murders, the presence of evil, country house murders, crimes rooted in psychology and character, and so forth.

The focus here is on the British detective story; the Americans and a handful of authors from Europe are given a couple of chapters later in the book, but this is primarily an in-depth look at the Golden Age of British detective fiction.

While there are dozens of books cited in the course of Edwards’s history, the most interesting – to me, at least – are the eponymous hundred books which are presented in some depth as examples for the books discussed in each chapter. Edwards provides  each book with a brief, spoiler-free outline of the plot and some interesting and relevant facts about its author. I consider myself reasonably well-versed in classic mystery fiction, but I am amazed at the number of titles – and authors – who were entirely new to me. 

If you’re getting the idea that I am extremely enthusiastic about The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books, by Martin Edwards, I can assure you that I am indeed. If you enjoy traditional mysteries, and if you have read (or plan to read) the series of books now being re-published by the British Library, this is an indispensable, informative – and highly entertaining – book.

Comments

[plus.google.com/116897478763124006190]

I'm looking forward to this a lot. I am not well read in the Golden Age other than the usual suspects of Christie, Sayers, etc. (But I do have a soft spot for R. Austin Freeman). I have started reading some of the British Library and Dean Street reissues and have liked most of them, so this should be very useful to me. Joe allegretti

[Les Blatt]

Joe, I think it's particularly encouraging to find so many publishers suddenly interested in bringing back some Golden Age classics. It's wise, though, to remember that there may be good reason why a particular author's books never did well... ;-)