Tony Medawar

This collection of short stories from various Golden Age mystery writers was a mixed bag. I mean, they all are but this one struck me as more so than others. Maybe this was because there was no overarching theme to this collection.

And it somehow felt as if the story by Agatha Christie was only added to carry the rest of the book.

Dame Agatha's contribution was interesting, but not a favourite.

One thing that I have taken away from this is that Cyril Hare is definitely becoming one of my favourite GA mystery writers. His works tend to have a dark side, but with quite a bit of humor and irony, too.… (más)

As you might expect, this collection contains stories from notable authors of the Golden Age of crime fiction. The authors are chosen from the US and the UK, and some will be recognizable to readers who enjoy the British Library Crime Classics series (E.C.R. Lorac makes an appearance) and the new American Mystery Classics (Q Patrick, one of the variant names of Patrick Quentin). Big names include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Christianna Brand. And some of the stories have never before been published, notably the Sayers and the Edmund Crispin stories.

I sampled a few stories from this collection and had better luck with the shorter ones. Some of the stories are novellas and feel a bit tiring for that reason, although that could have been down to my personal circumstances. And of course, because of the time period, there are some frustrating gender dynamics (the end of Q Patrick’s story infuriated me for that reason). But there’s a good range of stories, and I liked that the biographical profiles of each author were tucked in after their story, so if you didn’t want to read them, you could easily skip over them.

This collection is worth checking out if you like any of these authors or mysteries set in this time period.… (más)

This is a fascinating collection of stories and plays by Golden Age authors, including the one that got Arthur Upfield into so much trouble, about the perfect murder, and an Agatha Christie story The Wife of the Kenite published in in an Australian Women's Magazine in 1922. This is the earliest published Christie story that I have read. (See my list here).

Most of the stories in the anthology have only been published once, or not previously. Some have worn well, others were more 19th century in their "feel". After each short story is an excellent short biography of the author. The introduction also gave an excellent summary of the Golden Age period. What a productive time it was!

The contents
Before Insulin, J.J. Connington
The Inverness Cape, Leo Bruce
Dark Waters, Freeman Wills Croft
Lincke's Great Case, Georgette Heyer
Calling James Braithwaite, Nicholas Blake - a play
The Elusive Bullet, John Rhode
The Euthanasia of Hilary's Aunt, Cyril Hare
The Girdle of Dreams, Vincent Cornier
The Fool and the Perfect Murder, Arthur Upfield
Bread Upon the Waters, A.A. Milne
The Man with the Twisted Thumb, Anthony Berkeley
The Rum Punch, Christianna Brand
Blind Man's Buff, Ernest Bramah - a play
Victoria Pumphrey, H.C. Bailey
The Starting-Handle Murder, Roy Vickers
The Wife of the Kenite, Agatha Christie… (más)