classic crime fiction

Death in Ambush by Susan Gilruth

By Erin Britton

4 November, 2025

This year’s festive addition to the British Library Crime Classics series is Susan Gilruth’s Death in Ambush, which was first published in 1952. It is a Christmas-set mystery, yes, but one less about seasonal cheer and more about the tensions, hypocrisies and secrets that lie…

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Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo

By Erin Britton

8 September, 2025

Translated by Bryan Karetnyk — Murder at the Black Cat Cafe serves up two sinisterly cerebral cases cracked by Kosuke Kindaichi, Seishi Yokomizo’s sublime series detective. While the motive, means and opportunity differ quite considerably, the nefariousness at the heart of both novellas is firmly…

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A classic revisited: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

By Dave Bradley

10 June, 2024

When most people think of Shirley Jackson, they think of horror. The Haunting of Hill House is often cited as the archetypal 20th-century ghost story. Even scaremonger-in-chief Stephen King regards Shirley Jackson as a major influence, devoting 30 pages of his 1982 memoir Danse Macabre…

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Twice Round the Clock by Billie Houston

By Erin Britton

24 May, 2023

Horace Manning is a sinister madman. He is also a scientific genius. This combination of characteristics provides an indication of danger from the outset of Billie Houston’s Twice Round the Clock, although surprisingly, despite an atmosphere of evil hanging around him like a fog of…

Kindle Print Reviews

Death of a Bookseller by Bernard J Farmer

By Erin Britton

14 April, 2022

Death of a Bookseller, the 100th title to be published in the British Library’s sublime Crime Classics series, marks a welcome return to print for Bernard J Farmer. As Martin Edwards notes in his informative introduction to this new edition, copies of the previously long…

Print Reviews

These Names Make Clues by ECR Lorac

By Erin Britton

11 October, 2021

First published in 1937, the same year that ECR Lorac was elected a member of the prestigious Detection Club, These Names Make Clues is a cerebral detective story that is perhaps the most in keeping of all Lorac’s books with the conventions of the Golden…

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My crime classics by Anthony Horowitz

By crimefictionlover

12 August, 2021

English author Anthony Horowitz is writing some of the most innovative and inspiring crime fiction out there. Books like The Magpie Murders and The Word is Murder, in which a proxy of Anthony himself has a role to play, have left us dazzled with our…

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Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards

By Vicki Weisfeld

23 August, 2020

Right from the title, you know the stately Yorkshire family home Mortmain Hall will play a pivotal role in this classic mystery. The legal doctrine of mortmain, after all, refers to owners’ attempts to control the fate of their property after their death. As you…

Crime Fiction Lover

Death in Ambush by Susan Gilruth

Murder at the Black Cat Cafe by Seishi Yokomizo

A classic revisited: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Twice Round the Clock by Billie Houston

Death of a Bookseller by Bernard J Farmer

These Names Make Clues by ECR Lorac

My crime classics by Anthony Horowitz

Mortmain Hall by Martin Edwards

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