Seventeen scenarios of skulduggery, stealing, and slaughter in the British Library Crime Classics range, all centred on London, the finest city on god’s green Earth, and selected by the ne plus ultra of classic crime appreciation, Martin Edwards.
Continue readingAnthony Gilbert
#1141: “He must have known he was playing a dangerous game.” – Bodies from the Library 6 [ss] (2023) ed. Tony Medawar
Bodies from the Library 6 (2023) represents another delightful foray into the neglected and forgotten stories from many of the luminaries of the Golden Age, as editor Tony Medawar puts his enviable genre awareness to wonderful use bringing yet more gems to public attention.
Continue reading#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.
Continue reading#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.
Continue reading#949: Death in Five Boxes – Murder Begins at Home in No Flowers by Request (1953)
The Detection Club — a membership-by-election dining club for detective fiction writers, whose origins and early days were traced so entertainingly by Martin Edwards in The Golden Age of Murder (2015) — has produced several collaborative efforts down the years, and it’s to one of those that we turn today.
Continue reading#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.
Continue readingIn GAD We Trust – Episode 24: Bodies from the Library 4 (2021) ed. Tony Medawar + The International Agatha Christie Festival 2021 + Even More! [w’ Tony Medawar]
Prepare yourself for what might just be the most jam-packed episode of In GAD We Trust to date — when you sit down with Tony Medawar, there’s always going to be a lot to talk about.
Continue reading





