Murder by the Book – Martin Edwards (ed) (2021)

Murder by the Book – murder for bibliophiles; if there was ever going to be a perfect book for bookish fans of golden age crime then this must surly be it. The British Library are very good at bringing out these anthologies of stories from time to time, ably edited by Martin Edwards who always provides some useful background information to the stories and their writers. There have been some lovely, themed collections already – not that I have managed to read them all as yet – including stories featuring water, sporting stories, stories featuring mysterious creatures and Christmas stories. This time and perhaps most appealingly of all – we have stories featuring book collectors, libraries, ghost-writers, and authors. Again, we have a veritable who’s who of golden age writers collected here – including Nicholas Blake, A. A Milne, Julian Symons, Gladys Mitchell, and Ngaio Marsh – sixteen stories in all arranged chronologically by the date they were first published.  

Of course, I can’t possibly write about all sixteen stories – we’d be here all day – but in an attempt to give a flavour of the whole collection I have picked out a few to highlight. I have a feeling lots of other bloggers will be reviewing this one over the coming months.

The collection opens with an intriguing little tale – A lesson in Crime, written by GDH and M Cole a husband and wife writing duo (always interested in how that works). It is a very sharp little tale – in which a best selling crime novelist is given a particularly nasty little lesson in the crimes he writes about while travelling by train.

While most of the stories are set firmly in England, a couple are set further afield. One of my favourite stories was Malice Domestic by Philip Macdonald. It has a fabulous twist – and like the best stories of this type builds slowly. Carl Borden and his wife live in El Morro Beach. Carl is a writer, married to Annette for nine years, apparently happily, though a few of their closest friends have been dimly aware that perhaps all may not be quite so ideal as it looks. So, when Carl begins to suffer terrible stomach pains and extreme sickness after only eating at home, his friend doctor Wingate is very concerned and determined to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

Another excellent story – this time set in India is Book of Honour by John Creasey. An Englishman working in India develops a long and deep friendship with an Indian man he first meets when he is absolutely destitute. Baburao works hard to become a successful bookseller – but a terrible resentment and enmity develops between this gentle man and his eldest son.

A Man and his Mother-in-law by Roy Vickers is a brilliant story -long enough to fully immerse the reader. When a man marries a sweet, docile ‘obedient’ little wife he comes to enjoy his easy predictable life. However, he really doesn’t much like the relationship between his wife and the woman who raised her after her parents died. It’s another of those stories where we know whodunnit straight away – the interest lies elsewhere and it’s a thoroughly compelling story.

“In a letter written on the eve of execution, Arthur Penfold seems to share the judge’s astonishment that a man of his calibre should turn to murder to extricate himself from a domestic difficulty. A student of criminology could have told Penfold – if not the learned judge himself – that murder eventuates, not from immediate circumstance, but from an antecedent state of mind.”

In A Question of Character, by Victor Canning, a man decides to murder his wife primarily because of his own vanity.

Geoffrey Gilroy is a mystery writer, and so is his wife Martha. The problem is that Martha’s success has now greatly outstripped his – relegating him to being merely Martha Gilroy’s husband. Geoffrey, who already has a mistress he would much rather be with anyway – has quite frankly had enough.

“…he just saw red, gulped down his martini and got out of the room as fast as he could. We walked all the way back to Sloane Street with his mind in a murderous fog. Martha Gilroy’s husband. The best selling novelist. He’d married Martha ten years before, when she had been a private secretary to an industrial consultant. Not a good secretary either.”

What Victor Canning does so well here is to let us get into the mind of this potential murderer – his thought processes and planning are laid before us. We know exactly what he plans to do, when he proposes to do it and see him begin to make the necessary preparations. Where the tension lies in this story – is in whether his plan will come of – and will he be caught. Canning’s character is a fairly methodical man – he has thought out every bit of his plan – he puts his plan into action chillingly, without a moments hesitation. I must say it is a very compelling story, superbly paced with gradually increasing tension, which I finished with my heart in my mouth.

As a reader of mainly women’s fiction, I would have liked to see more women writers represented in this collection. Still there are a few good stories by women too – a couple were new names to me including Murder in Advance by Marjorie Bremner. Dacre and his good friend Dr Allerton seek to solve the murder of a playwright Lewis Maynard. They come to the conclusion that the answer lies in the play he was planning on writing. I was also glad to see Ngaio Marsh in the collection, a writer who’s novels I have enjoyed immensely in the past. Chapter and Verse – comes at the end of the collection – and sees Alleyn’s wife Troy contacted by a man who knew her husband in New Zealand. The man describes himself as a bookman – and is doing some research into the names that appear in an old family bible he has in his possession. When he arrives to show Troy, she ends up getting drawn into an unexpected murder.

This is a brilliant collection of stories – some very inventive crimes and an absolute must for all you crime loving book obsessives out there. I predict that this one will do well at Christmas – if the c word is allowed in early September.