Back in the 1940s (and perhaps earlier too), The Viking Press released a series of “Portable” collections; these were small hard-cover books collecting short stories by specific authors (Steinbeck, for example) or by genre (“Novels of Science”). The “Murder Book” in the series comprises re-tellings of actual historical murders, in this instance grouped by geography. The book is divided into three sections: the US, the British Isles, and “France, Germany, Hungary, the Antipodes,” and full re-tellings of the crimes under discussion, along with speculation, are provided. What’s interesting is who is doing the re-telling; many are names long out of the public consciousness, but we do remember people like William Bolitho, Christopher Morley, Alexander Woollcott and, most clearly, Dorothy Sayers (who writes of the murder of Julia Wallace). One story, “Constance Kent” by John Rhode, recounts a murder recently described at book length in Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher (which I reviewed favourably in November 2011), but all of the entries here are at the very least interesting and in some cases quite fascinating. I think I found this in a used book store or library sale, as I very much doubt it’s still widely available, but an interesting read if one can find it, keeping in mind the prejudices of the day of course. ( )

331. The Portable Murder Book, edited by Joseph Henry Jackson (read 19 May 1947) My comment on this book on May 13: " Reading true murder stories. Very interesting. Horrory." When I finished the book on May 19 my comment was: "Some good stories in it." In the years to come I heard of some of the murders recounted in this book and reflected that this book had told me about them. ( )