The British Library is republishing many older crime novels in beautiful new covers. I have reviewed a number of them and I think that they are a delight. In addition to full length novels the British Library has also released a number of anthologies of short stories edited by Martin Edwards (who writes crime novels of his own – see here for a review). I have already read and reviewed a collection of stories set at Christmas (see here for a review) and Serpents in Eden is a collection of short crime fiction all of which is set in the countryside – in particular, the English countryside. I really enjoyed these stories.
The editor writes a good introduction to the collection as a whole and then a short, informative piece before each story about the author. These are interesting but short enough not to get in the way of the enjoyment of the fiction. There are thirteen short stories here so none of them is very long and they are written by people famous in the field of crime fiction in the first half of the twentieth century. Authors included are Arthur Conan Doyle, Margery Allingham, GK Chesterton and Gladys Mitchell but don’t assume that these greats of the literary world write the best stories as I enjoyed many of the others just as much even though I had never read anything previously by the authors.
Because these are short stories the authors have to create the mystery, introduce the characters and then wrap everything up within about twenty pages. Some of them are better able to do this than others but there are no stories here which fail completely and the overall theme of crime in the country allows a lot of leeway in the stories which are included.
I highly recommend anything in this series of reissues by the British Library but their collections of short stories have been truly enjoyable. I think that everyone would find at least one story in this collection that they would love and many others that they will be pleased that they have read.
Anne Is Reading 