British Library Crime Classics
By The Book Fairies
British Library Crime Classics
By The Book Fairies
We absolutely love shouting about these crime classics from The British Library. They are out-of-copyright unknown mysteries, matched with stunning artwork and re-published!
A Surprise for Christmas: And Other Seasonal Mysteries
£9.99 £9.49
Two dead bodies and a Christmas stocking weaponised. A Postman murdered delivering cards on Christmas morning. A Christmas tree growing over a forgotten homicide.
The Progress of a Crime: A Fireworks Night Mystery
Julian Symons
£8.99 £8.54The murder, a brutal stabbing, definitely took place on Guy Fawkes' night. It was definitely by the bonfire on the village green. There were definitely a number of witnesses. And yet, was it definitely clear to anybody exactly what they had seen?
The Lost Gallows: A London Mystery
John Dickson Carr
£8.99 £8.54John Dickson Carr lays on the macabre atmosphere again in this follow-up to It Walks by Night, in which Inspector Bencolin attempts to piece together a puzzle involving a disappearing street, a set of gallows which mysteriously reveals itself to a number of figures traipsing through the London fog, and the bizarre suggestion that a kind of fictional bogeyman, Jack Ketch, may be afoot and in the business of wanton execution.
The Spoilt Kill: A Staffordshire Mystery
Mary Kelly
£8.99 £8.54Staffordshire in the 1950s. Within the clay tanks at the pottery company Shentall's, a body has been found. Amid cries of industrial espionage and sabotage of this leader of the pottery industry, there is a case of bitter murder to solve...
The Christmas Card Crime: and other stories
£8.99 £8.54
A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman's watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned admist the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street's Christmas shopping. Lost in a snowstorm, a man finds a motive for murder...
The Man Who Didn't Fly
Margot Bennett
£8.99 £8.54Four men were due to fly to Dublin. When disaster struck and the plane went down over the Irish sea, only three of them were on board. With the identities of the flyers scattered to the winds, the police turn to the patchy account of the Wade family, whose memory of their past few days must hold the key to this elusive and tense mystery.
Checkmate to Murder: A Second World War Mystery
E.C.R. Lorac
£9.99 £9.49On a dismally foggy night in Hampstead, London, a curious party has gathered in an artist's studio to weather the wartime blackout...
Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story
J. Jefferson Farjeon
£8.99 £8.54Several passengers take shelter in a deserted country house, where the fire has been lit and the table laid for tea - but no one is at home. Trapped together for Christmas, the passengers are seeking to unravel the secrets of the empty house when a murderer strikes in their midst.
The Cornish Coast Murder
John Bude
£9.99 £9.49This classic mystery novel of the golden age of British crime fiction is set against the vividly described backdrop of a fishing village on Cornwall's Atlantic coast . It is now republished for the first time since the 1930s.
Crossed Skis: An Alpine Mystery
Carol Carnac and E.C.R. Lorac
£9.99 £9.49In London's Bloomsbury, Inspector Julian Rivers of Scotland Yard looks down at a dismal scene. Here is the victim, burnt to a crisp...
Death in White Pyjamas: & Death Knows No Calendar
John Bude
£8.99 £8.54With four colourful suspects to scrutinise, and not one but two 'impossible' elements of the crime to solve, this extremely rare and thoroughly entertaining mystery is long overdue its return to print.
Settling Scores: Sporting Mysteries
£8.99 £8.54
Talented sportsmen inexplicably go absent without leave, crafty gamblers conspire in the hope of making a killing, and personal rivalries and jealousies come to a head on fields of play...
Thirteen Guests
J. Jefferson Farjeon
£8.99 £8.54Detective Inspector Kendall's skills are tested to the utmost as he tries to uncover the hidden past of everyone at Bragley Court. This country-house mystery is a forgotten classic of 1930s crime fiction by one of the most undeservedly neglected of golden age detective novelists.
Castle Skull: A Rhineland Mystery
John Dickson Carr
£8.99 £8.54This new edition of John Dickson Carr's spirited and deeply atmospheric early novel also features the rare Inspector Bencolin short story 'The Fourth Suspect'.
The Santa Klaus Murder
Mavis Doriel Hay
£8.99 £8.54Aunt Mildred declared that no good could come of the Melbury family Christmas gatherings at their country residence Flaxmere. So when Sir Osmond Melbury, the family patriarch, is discovered - by a guest dressed as Santa Klaus - with a bullet in his head on Christmas Day, the festivities are plunged into chaos.
Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries
£8.99 £8.54
Martin Edwards' selection blends festive pieces from much-loved authors with one or two stories which are likely to be unfamiliar even to diehard mystery fans. The result is a collection of crime fiction to savour, whatever the season.
The Z Murders
J. Jefferson Farjeon
£8.99 £8.54This classic novel by the author of the best-selling Mystery in White is a gripping thriller by a neglected master of the genre.
The Lake District Murder
John Bude
£9.99 £9.49'Luke flung the light of his torch full onto the face of the immobile figure. Then he had the shock of his life. The man had no face! Where his face should have been was a sort of inhuman, uniform blank!' When a body is found at an isolated garage, Inspector Meredith is drawn into a complex investigation where every clue leads to another puzzle: was this a suicide, or something more sinister?
Murder of a Lady
Anthony Wynne
£9.99 £9.49Duchlan Castle is a gloomy, forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is found in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom - but the room is locked from within and the windows are barred...
Death on the Riviera
John Bude
£8.99 £8.54When a counterfeit currency racket comes to light on the French Riviera, Detective Inspector Meredith is sent speeding southwards - out of the London murk to the warmth and glitter of the Mediterranean. This is the first edition to have been published in more than sixty years and follows the rediscovery of Bude's long-neglected detective writing by the British Library.
The Sussex Downs Murder
John Bude
£9.99 £9.49'Already it looked as if the police were up against a carefully planned and cleverly executed murder, and, what was more, a murder without a corpse!' Two brothers, John and William Rother, live together at Chalklands Farm in the beautiful Sussex Downs. Their peaceful rural life is shattered when John Rother disappears and his abandoned car is found.
The Hog's Back Mystery
Freeman Wills Crofts
£9.99 £9.49Dr James Earle and his wife live in comfortable seclusion near the Hog's Back, a ridge in the North Downs in the beautiful Surrey countryside. When Dr Earle disappears from his cottage, Inspector French is called in to investigate.
Murder Underground
Mavis Doriel Hay
£9.99 £9.49When Miss Pongleton is found murdered on the stairs of Belsize Park station, her fellow-boarders in the Frampton Hotel are not overwhelmed with grief at the death of a tiresome old woman.
Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries
Martin Edwards
£8.99 £8.54The English country house is an iconic setting for some of the greatest British crime fiction. Short stories are an important part of this tradition, and writers from Agatha Christie to Margery Allingham became famous for the intricate cases which their detectives unravelled in rambling country houses. These stories continue to enjoy wide appeal, driven partly by nostalgia for a vanished way of life, and partly by the pleasure of trying to solve a fiendishly clued puzzle.
Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries
£8.99 £8.54
Crimson Snow brings together a dozen vintage crime stories set in winter. Welcome to a world of Father Christmases behaving oddly, a famous fictional detective in a Yuletide drama, mysterious tracks in the snow----, and some very unpleasant carol singers.
Portrait of a Murderer: A Christmas Crime Story
Anne Meredith and Anthony Gilbert
£8.99 £8.54Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931. Thus begins a classic crime novel published in 1933, a riveting portrait of the psychology of a murderer.
Quick Curtain
Alan Melville
£8.99 £8.54Quick Curtain is a witty detective story, originally published in 1934. It is one among many books that enjoyed brief popularity during the "Golden Age of murder" between the two world wars but subsequently fell out of sight.
The Cheltenham Square Murder
John Bude
£8.99 £8.54In the seeming tranquility of Regency Square in Cheltenham live the diverse inhabitants of its ten houses. One summer's evening, the square's rivalries and allegiances are disrupted by a sudden and unusual death..
Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries
£8.99 £8.54
Holidays offer us the luxury of getting away from it all. So, in a different way, do detective stories. This collection of vintage mysteries combines both those pleasures.
The 12.30 from Croydon
Freeman Wills Crofts
£9.99 £9.49We begin with a body. Andrew Crowther, a wealthy retired manufacturer, is found dead in his seat on the 12.30 flight from Croydon to Paris. Rather less orthodox is the ensuing flashback in which we live with the killer at every stage, from the first thoughts of murder to the strains and stresses of living with its execution.
Bats in the Belfry: A London Mystery
E. C. R. Lorac
£8.99 £8.54This intricate mystery from a classic writer is set in a superbly evoked London of the 1930s.
Capital Crimes: London Mysteries
£10.99 £10.44
With its fascinating mix of people - rich and poor, British and foreign, worthy and suspicious - London is a city where anything can happen. The possibilities for criminals and for the crime writer are endless...
Death on the Cherwell
Mavis Doriel Hay
£9.99 £9.49For Miss Cordell, principal of Persephone College, there are two great evils to be feared: unladylike behaviour among her students, and bad publicity for the college. So her prim and cosy world is turned upside down when a secret society of undergraduates meets by the river on a gloomy January afternoon, only to find the drowned body of the college bursar floating in her canoe...
The Christmas Egg: A Seasonal Mystery
Mary Kelly
£8.99 £8.54Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find the body of Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution. Taking place in the three days leading up to Christmas, Nightingale's enquiry takes him to a gramophone shop and a jewellers, culminating in the wrapping of the mystery on Christmas Eve.
Calamity in Kent
John Rowland
£9.99 £9.49In the peaceful seaside town of Broadgate, an impossible crime occurs. The operator of the cliff railway locks the empty carriage one evening; when he returns to work next morning, a dead body is locked inside...
The Secret of High Eldersham
Miles Burton
£8.99 £8.54Samuel Whitehead, landlord of the Rose and Crown, is a stranger in the lonely East Anglian village of High Eldersham. When the newcomer is stabbed to death in his pub, and Scotland Yard are called to the scene, it seems that the veil dividing High Eldersham from the outside world is about to be lifted...
The Poisoned Chocolates Case
Anthony Berkeley
£9.99 £9.49Joan Bendix is killed by a poisoned box of liqueur chocolates that cannot have been intended for her to eat. The police investigation rapidly reaches a dead end...
The Dead Shall be Raised and Murder of a Quack
George Bellairs
£8.99 £8.54Two classic cases featuring Detective-Inspector Littlejohn.In the winter of 1940, the Home Guard unearths a skeleton on the moor above the busy town of Hatterworth. Twenty-three years earlier, the body of a young textile worker was found in the same spot, and the prime suspect was never found - but the second body is now identified as his...
Antidote to Venom
Freeman Wills Crofts
£8.99 £8.54This ingenious crime novel, with its unusual 'inverted' structure and sympathetic portrait of a man on the edge, is one of the greatest works by this highly respected author. The elaborate means of murder devised by Crofts's characters is perhaps unsurpassed in English crime fiction for its ostentatious intricacy.
Fire in the Thatch: A Devon Mystery
E. C. R. Lorac
£9.99 £9.49When Little Thatch is destroyed in a blaze, all Vaughan's work goes up in smoke - and Inspector Macdonald is drafted in to uncover a motive for murder...
Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm
Gil North
£7.99 £7.59This novel, originally published in 1960, is the first in the series of Sergeant Cluff detective stories that were televised in the 1960s but have long been neglected. This new edition is published in the centenary year of the author's birth.
Death of Anton
Alan Melville
£8.99 £8.54When Anton is found lying dead in the tigers' cage, it seems that he has lost control and been mauled by the tigers - but Detective-Inspector Minto of Scotland Yard is not convinced...
Blood on the Tracks: Railway Mysteries
£10.99 £10.44
A signalman is found dead by a railway tunnel. A man identifies his wife as a victim of murder on the underground. Two passengers mysteriously disappear between stations...
Somebody at the Door
Raymond Postgate
£8.99 £8.54In the winter of 1942, England lies cold and dark in the wartime blackout. One bleak evening, Councillor Grayling steps off the 6.12 from Euston, carrying GBP120 in cash, and oblivious to the fate that awaits him in the snow-covered suburbs...
Verdict of Twelve
Raymond Postgate
£8.99 £8.54Since its first publication in 1940, Verdict of Twelve has been widely hailed as a classic of British crime writing. This edition offers a new generation of readers the chance to find out why so many leading commentators have admired the novel for so long.
Death of a Busybody
George Bellairs
£8.99The eponymous nosy parker in Death of a Busybody is Miss Ethel Tither. She has made herself deeply unpopular in the quintessentially English village of Hilary Magna, since she goes out of her way to snoop on people, and interfere with their lives. On being introduced to her, the seasoned reader of detective stories will spot a murder victim in the making...
The Division Bell Mystery
Ellen Wilkinson
£9.99 £9.49A financier is found shot in the House of Commons. Suspecting foul play, Robert West, a parliamentary private secretary, takes on the role of amateur sleuth...
Murder in Piccadilly
Charles Kingston
£8.99When Bobbie Cheldon falls in love with a pretty young dancer at the Frozen Fang night club in Soho, he has every hope of an idyllic marriage. But Nancy has more worldly ideas about her future: she is attracted not so much to Bobbie as to the fortune he expects to inherit.
Death Makes a Prophet
John Bude
£8.99The stage is set for one of Inspector Meredith's most bizarre and exacting cases. This witty crime novel by a writer on top form is a neglected classic of British crime fiction.
The Methods of Sergeant Cluff
Gil North
£7.99 £7.59After battling for justice, at great personal risk, in his first recorded case, Sergeant Caleb Cluff made a swift return to duty in this book. The story opens one wet and windy night, with the discovery of a young woman's corpse, lying face down on the cobblestones of a passageway in the Yorkshire town of Gunnarshaw...
Miraculous Mysteries: Locked-Room Murders and Impossible Crimes
£10.99 £10.44
Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham. This anthology celebrates their work, alongside long-hidden gems by less familiar writers. Together these stories demonstrate the range and high accomplishment of the classic British impossible crime story over more than half a century.
Mystery in the Channel
Freeman Wills Crofts
£8.99 £8.54Mystery in the Channel is a classic crime novel with a strikingly modern sub-text. The story begins with a shocking discovery. The captain of the Newhaven to Dieppe steamer spots a small pleasure yacht lying motionless in the water, and on closer inspection, sees a body lying on the deck...
Murder by Matchlight
E. C. R. Lorac
£8.99 £8.54London. 1945. The capital is shrouded in the darkness of the blackout, and mystery abounds in the parks after dusk. During a stroll through Regent's Park, Bruce Mallaig witnesses two men acting suspiciously around a footbridge...
Family Matters
Anthony Rolls
£8.99 £8.54This richly characterised and elegantly written crime novel from 1933 is a true forgotten classic.
Seven Dead
J. Jefferson Farjeon
£8.99 £8.54Ted Lyte, amateur thief, has chosen an isolated house by the coast for his first robbery. But Haven House is no ordinary country home. While hunting for silverware to steal, Ted stumbles upon a locked room containing seven dead bodies...
Fell Murder: A Lancashire Mystery
E.C.R. Lorac
£8.99 £8.54First published in 1944 Fell Murder sees E.C.R. Lorac at the height of her considerable powers as a purveyor of well-made, traditional and emphatic detective fiction. The book presents a fascinating `return of the prodigal' mystery set in the later stages of the Second World War amidst the close-knit farmerfolk community of Lancashire's lovely Lune valley.
The Body in the Dumb River: A Yorkshire Mystery
George Bellairs
£8.99 £8.54Jim has been drowned in the Dumb River, near Ely, miles from his Yorkshire home. His body, clearly dumped in the usually silent waterway, has been discovered before the killer intended - disturbed by a torrential flood...
Continental Crimes
£8.99 £8.54
A man is forbidden to uncover the secret of the tower in a fairy-tale castle by the Rhine. A headless corpse is found in a secret garden in Paris - belonging to the city's chief of police...
The Incredible Crime: A Cambridge Mystery
Lois Austen-Leigh
£9.99 £9.49Studde is on the trail of a drug smuggling ring that connects Wellende Hall with the cloistered world of Cambridge. It falls to Prudence to unravel the identity of the smugglers - who may be forced to kill, to protect their secret.
The Female Detective: The Original Lady Detective, 1864
Andrew Forrester
£8.99The Female Detective was published in 1864 and it introduces the first professional female detective in British fiction, Mrs Gladden. Typical of detective fiction of its time, Forrester's book features various cases narrated by Gladden, whose deductive methods and energetic approach anticipate those of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
Smallbone Deceased: A London Mystery
Michael Gilbert
£8.99 £8.54Horniman, Birley and Craine is a highly respected legal firm with clients reaching to the highest in the land. When a deed box in the office is opened to reveal a corpse, the threat of scandal promises to wreak havoc on the firm's reputation...
It Walks by Night: A Paris Mystery
John Dickson Carr
£8.99 £8.54In the smoke-wreathed gloom of a Parisian salon, Inspector Bencolin has summoned his allies to discuss a peculiar case. A would-be murderer, imprisoned for his attempt to kill his wife, has escaped and is known to have visited a plastic surgeon...
The Measure of Malice: Scientific Detection Stories
£8.99 £8.54
The detectives in this collection are masters of scientific deduction, whether they are identifying the perpetrator from a single scrap of fabric, or picking out the poison from a sinister line-up.
Murder in the Mill-Race: A Devon Mystery
E. C. R. Lorac
£8.99 £8.54When Dr Raymond Ferens moves to a practice at Milham in the Moor in North Devon, he and his wife are enchanted with the beautiful hilltop village lying so close to moor and sky. At first they see only its charm, but soon they begin to uncover its secrets - envy, hatred and malice...
Weekend at Thrackley
Alan Melville
£9.99 £9.49Jim Henderson is one of six guests summoned by the mysterious Edwin Carson, a collector of precious stones, to a weekend party at his country house, Thrackley. The house is gloomy and forbidding but the party is warm and hospitable - except for the presence of Jacobson, the sinister butler...
Death Has Deep Roots: A Second World War Mystery
Michael Gilbert
£8.99 £8.54At the Central Criminal Court, an eager crowd awaits the trial of Victoria Lamartine, an active participant in the Resistance during the war. She is now employed at the Family Hotel in Soho, where Major Eric Thoseby has been found murdered...
Deep Waters
£8.99 £8.54
From picturesque canals to the swirling currents of the ocean, a world of secrets lies buried beneath the surface of the water. Dubious vessels crawl along riverbeds, while the murky depths conceal more than one gruesome murder...
The Pocket Detective: 100+ Puzzles
£7.99 £7.59
Polish off your magnifying glass and step into the shoes of your favourite detectives as you unlock tantalising clues and solve intricate puzzles. There are over 100 criminally teasing challenges to be scrutinised, including word searches, anagrams, snapshot covers, and crosswords - a favourite puzzle of crime fiction's golden age.
The Long Arm of the Law: Classic Police Stories
£8.99 £8.54
The twelve stories collected here strike a blow for the professionals, with teasing mysteries to challenge hard-working police officers' persistence and scrupulous attention to detail.
Excellent Intentions
Richard Hull
£8.99 £8.54Twelve jurors sit in court. Four suspects are identified - but which of them is on trial?
The Murder of My Aunt
Richard Hull
£8.99 £8.54Edward Powell lives with his Aunt Mildred in the Welsh town of Lywll. His aunt thinks Lywll an idyllic place to live, but Edward loathes the countryside - and thinks the company even worse. In face, Edward has decided to murder his aunt...
The Colour of Murder
Julian Symons
£8.99John Wilkins meets a beautiful, irresistible girl, and his world is turned upside down. Looking at his wife, and thinking of the girl, everything turns red before his eyes - the colour of murder.
The Notting Hill Mystery
Charles Warren Adams
£8.99 £8.54Presented in the form of diary entries, family letters, chemical analysis reports, interviews with witnesses and a crime scene map, the novel displays innovative techniques that would not become common features of detective fiction until the 1920s. This novel launched the British Library Crime Classics series in 2012, and is now reissued with a striking new cover design.
Foreign Bodies
£8.99 £8.54
This is the first ever collection of classic crime in translation from the golden age of the genre in the 20th century. Many of these stories are exceptionally rare, and several have been translated for the first time to appear in this volume.
Surfeit of Suspects
George Bellairs
£8.99 £8.54Beneath the sleepy veneer of Evingden lies a hotbed of deep-seated grievances. Confounding Littlejohn's investigation is an impressive cast of suspicious persons, each concealing their own axe to grind. Bellairs' novel of small-town grudges with calamitous consequences revels in the abundant possible solutions to the central crime as a masterpiece of misdirection.
The Belting Inheritance
Julian Symons
£8.99 £8.54Lady Wainwright presides over the gothic gloom at Belting, in mourning for her two sons lost in the Second World War. Long afterwards a stranger arrives at Belting, claiming to be the missing David Wainwright - who was not killed after all, but held captive for years in a Russian prison camp...
Death in Captivity: A Second World War Mystery
Michael Gilbert
£9.99 £9.49A man is found dead in an escape tunnel in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. Did he die in an accidental collapse - or was this murder?
The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books
£14.99 £14.24
This book serves as a companion to the acclaimed British Library Crime Classics series but it tells a very diverse story. It presents the development of crime fiction - from Sherlock Holmes to the end of the golden age - in an accessible, informative and engaging style.
Portrait of a Murderer: A Christmas Crime Story
Anne Meredith
£14.99Hardback edition - Adrian Gray was born in May 1862 and met his death through violence, at the hands of one of his own children, at Christmas, 1931. Thus begins a classic crime novel published in 1933, a riveting portrait of the psychology of a murderer.
Death in the Tunnel
Miles Burton
£8.99 £8.54On a dark November evening, Sir Wilfred Saxonby is travelling alone in the 5 o'clock train from Cannon Street, in a locked compartment. The train slows and stops inside a tunnel; and by the time it emerges again minutes later, Sir Wilfred has been shot dead...
A Scream in Soho
John G. Brandon
£8.99 £8.54Soho during the blackouts of the Second World War. When a piercing scream rends the air and a bloodied knife is found, Detective Inspector MacCarthy is soon on the scene.
Serpents in Eden: Countryside Crimes
£8.99 £8.54
From a tale of poison-pen letters tearing apart a village community to a macabre mystery by Arthur Conan Doyle, the stories collected here reveal the dark truths hidden in an assortment of rural paradises.
Death of a Bookseller
Bernard J Farmer
£9.99 £9.49An honest policeman, Sergeant Wigan, escorts a drunk man home one night to keep him out of trouble and, seeing his fine book collection, slowly falls in to the gentle art of book collecting. Just as the friendship is blossoming, the policeman's book-collecting friend is murdered.