Book Club

Nine Lessons

By
There are two real life classic fiction writers for the price of one in Nicola Upson’s seventh book in a series featuring Golden Age crime writer and playwright Josephine Tey as the main character. And although he died the year before 1937 when the novel is set,…
Read more
iBookKindlePrintReviews

An English Murder

By
Written by Cyril Hare — Faber and Faber’s new reissue of Cyril Hare’s 1951 novel An English Murder could not be more timely as division and extremism make for fraught politics. Trump and his white supremacists versus the deep blue Democrats, Brexiters and Corbynistas, and…
Read more
iBookKindlePrintReviews

Nine Lessons

By
Written by Nicola Upson — You get two real life classic fiction writers for the price of one in this seventh book in a series featuring Golden Age crime writer and playwright Josephine Tey as the main character. And although he died the year before 1937…
Read more
Features

In the footsteps of Agatha Christie

By
When Kenneth Branagh’s big screen version of Murder on the Orient Express comes to British cinemas on 3 November, another generation of crime fiction fans will have the chance to sit back and marvel at the dark imagination of Golden Age crime author Agatha Christie,…
Read more
iBookKindlePrintReviews

CIS: The Mitford Murders

By
Written by Jessica Fellowes — It’s 12 January 1920. Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of the famous Florence Nightingale, boards a train. She settles herself, and the train starts to move. But as they leave the station and head towards another we are told that this…
Read more
iBookKindlePrintReviews

CIS: Frequent Hearses

By
Written by Edmund Crispin — Between 1944 and 1977, Robert Bruce Montgomery wrote a string of novels under the name Edmund Crispin. Today he is considered to be one of the underappreciated masters of the Golden Age of crime fiction. His novels featuring eccentric Oxford professor…
Read more
Features

CIS: Rim of the Pit revisited

By
Today, when lists of new crime and thriller books are saturated with stories involving ever-more numerous and gruesome deaths for their fictional characters, a look back at the kinds of mysteries that emphasise puzzles over gore can be more than a bit refreshing. A classic…
Read more
Features

CIS: Nicola Upson interviewed

By
Her debut novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of classy crime novels by Nicola Upson, whose main character is Josephine Tey – one of the leading authors of the Golden Age of crime fiction. Tey’s detective novels were hugely popular…
Read more