I am a little amazed at the sheer stamina displayed by British crime writer Martin Edwards. To begin with, he is a successful lawyer - solicitor to our British cousins. He is the author of a couple of popular series of crime novels. He has also written a couple of non-fiction books focusing on the history of Golden Age mysteries and mystery writers; one of those books, The Golden Age of Murder, has won many of the major literary awards in that field. He also serves as the president (and historian) of the Detection Club, the prestigious club of mystery writers founded in 1930 and including such luminaries as Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, and G. K. Chesterton. Oh, and he's also the Chair of the British Crime Writers' Association.
If all that weren't enough, he is also the anthologizer, editor and introduction-writer of several anthologies of short stories, which have been appearing as part of the British Library Crime Classics series. The most recent volume, just published in August, is called Continental Crimes. It's a collection of stories, many from that Golden Age but some from before and after that time period as well, nearly all written by British writers but set on the continent of Europe. Continental Crimes, Edited by Martin Edwards is the subject of this week's audio review on the Classic Mysteries podcast, and you can listen to the complete review by clicking here.
While I suspect that some of the authors will be familiar, the stories Edwards has chosen may very well be new to you. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, is represented here by "The New Catacomb," a story which owes more to Edgar Allan Poe than to Sherlock Holmes. Agatha Christie's contribution is a short story that stars Mr. Parker Pyne, a detective far less known than Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, called "Have You Got Everything You Want?." Chesterton's story does feature Father Brown, but "The Secret Garden" isn't as familiar as some of the author's other "impossible crime" stories.
There are lots more - fourteen in all, with a nice sprinkling of less familiar authors, such as Stacy Aumonier, Ian Hay and H. de Vere Stacpool. On the podcast this week, I do offer brief reviews of many of the stories, so do click here to listen to the whole thing. Each story features a brief introductory essay by Martin Edwards, who also provides an introduction to the collection as a whole.
Mystery short stories are a convenient way of getting our necessary dosage of mystery fiction in a neat and not overly long package. The stories chosen by Martin Edwards for Continental Crimes are quite well suited to the task.
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