Features

In the footsteps of Agatha Christie

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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,…
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CIS: The Mitford Murders

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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…
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CIS: Frequent Hearses

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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…
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Features

CIS: Rim of the Pit revisited

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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…
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Features

CIS: Nicola Upson interviewed

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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…
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Book Club

The Lighthearted Quest

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Ann Bridge’s series of novels featuring dilettante journalist Julia Probyn are unfairly forgotten gems of the later Golden Age – wonderfully revived by Bloomsbury Reader. In the first book in the collection, Julia sets off to Morocco to find her cousin, next in line for…
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The Allingham Casebook

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Written by Margery Allingham — Writing a short story is like packing for a low cost holiday. When you’ve got a limit on how much you can put in, you have to make choices. You have to make sacrifices. This collection of 18 stories by Golden…
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