Bodies from the Library 5: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense from the Golden Age of Detection

Classic crime fiction's 'Indiana Jones' Tony Medawar unearths more unpublished and uncollected stories from the Golden Age of suspense, including John Bude, John Dickson Carr, Dorothy L. Sayers and Julian Symons.

The end of the First World War saw the rise of an insatiable public appetite for clever and thrilling mystery fiction and a new kind of hero – the modern crime writer. As the genre soared in popularity, so did the inventiveness of its best authors, ushering in a “Golden Age” of detective fiction – two decades of exemplary mystery writing: the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.

The Golden Age still casts a long shadow, with many of the authors who were published at that time still hugely popular today. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although many have been republished in books over the last 100 years, Bodies from the Library collects the ones that are impossible to find: stories that appeared in a newspaper, magazine or an anthology that has long been out of print; ephemeral works such as plays not aired, staged or screened for decades; and unpublished stories that were absorbed into an author’s archive when they died . . .

Complete with fascinating biographies by Tony Medawar of all the featured authors, this latest volume in the annual Bodies from the Library series once again brings into the daylight the forgotten, the lost and the unknown, and is an indispensable collection for any bookshelf.

• Includes Murder at Montparnasse, a substantial novella by John Bude, author of The Cornish Coast Murder and other bestselling British Library crime titles.
• The official book of the British Library’s annual ‘Bodies from the Library’ classic crime fiction event, now in its ninth year.

Competition: midwinter murder;howdunit;the last seance;killings at kingfisher hill;closed casket;death on the nile;murder on the orient express;the pale horse;death on the way;inspector french. by;martin edwards;agatha christie;dorothy l sayers;ngaio marsh;freeman wills crofts;ian rankin;stephen king;sophie hannah