Welcome to Classics in September 2017

It’s become a tradition with us. Every September we go back to school and check out some of the best classic crime fiction. We find it exhilarating and inspiring.

This year we’ve got plenty planned, aided and abetted by our sponsors at Bloomsbury Reader, who have been republishing plenty of lost gems from the Golden Age of crime fiction.

We’re going to take a look at the new rendition of Murder on the Orient Express, with Kenneth Branagh (pictured) both directing and playing Hercule Poirot. We hope to feature some eye-catching Sherlock Holmes graphic novels. If hardboiled is more your thing, we’ll also be revisiting The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

Our writers are casting their scrutinising gaze at a plethora of other classics too. Watch out for Rim of the Pit by Hake Talbot, Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin, five of the best Scottish crime novels, and the lost classics of Desmond Bagley. We’ll be talking to authors about how classic crime fiction has influenced them with Ann Cleeves sharing her favourites, and Nicola Upson discussing her novels which feature the classic crime author Josephine Tey as a main character. Lots more is planned including prize draws on our Facebook page.

Oh, and don’t miss the feature Warren Adler is writing for us about the best classic crime films he’s ever seen. Wonder if Murder on the Orient Express will be on that list…

This is the sixth time we’ve run Classics in September. To read some of the articles we’ve run in the past, click on the years below:

2012
2013
2014
2015
2016