#1135: “Don’t be so infernally bloodthirsty!” – Who Killed Father Christmas? and Other Seasonal Mysteries [ss] (2023) ed. Martin Edwards

Astoundingly, Who Killed Father Christmas? (2023) is the fifth collection of seasonal mysteries collated by Martin Edwards for the British Library Crime Classics range. And, with the BL kind enough to provide me with a review copy, it seemed like the perfect excuse to start some Christmas reading a little earlier than planned.

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#1117: Mining Mount TBR – Death Knocks Three Times (1949) by Anthony Gilbert

I’ve heard great things about the novels Lucy Beatrice Malleson wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert but, apart from one title in the British Library Crime Classics range, they seem pretty hard to come by. Fortuitously stumbling over an old, musty, collapsing copy of Death Knocks Three Times (1949), I’ve been reluctant to pick it up precisely because of its musty, dilapidated condition…but here goes nothing.

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#831: “As you know, an unusual crime has a deep interest for me…” – Bodies from the Library 4 [ss] (2021) ed. Tony Medawar

I can’t believe that there is a GAD enthusiast who doesn’t look forward to the annual Bodies from the Library collections so expertly curated by Tony Medawar. In bringing to public awareness some of the forgotten, neglected, or simply unknown stories that the great and the good of the form produced, these collections have become a source of great excitement, and a must-read for even the most ardent student of the Golden Age.

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