Winner of the 2016 EDGAR, AGATHA, MACAVITY and H.R.F.KEATING crime writing awards, this real-life detective story investigates how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction.
Detective stories of the Twenties and Thirties have long been stereotyped as cosily conventional. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Golden Age of Murder tells for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two World Wars. A gripping real-life detective story, it investigates how Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie and their colleagues in the mysterious Detection Club transformed crime fiction. Their work cast new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors’ darkest secrets, and their complex and sometimes bizarre private lives.
Crime novelist and current Detection Club President Martin Edwards rewrites the history of crime fiction with unique authority, transforming our understanding of detective stories, and the brilliant but tormented men and women who wrote them.

The Golden Age of Murder

Biographies & Memoirs

Edwards, Martin

Arts & Literature

Harpercollins

Collins Crime Club

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators

In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction. 
Author Martin Edwards is a multi-award-winning crime novelist, the President of the Detection Club, archivist of the Crime Writers’ Association and series consultant to the British Library’s highly successful series of crime classics, and therefore uniquely qualified to write this book. He has been a widely respected genre commentator for more than thirty years, winning the CWA Diamond Dagger for making a significant contribution to crime writing in 2020, when he also compiled and published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club and the novel Mortmain Hall. His critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder (Collins Crime Club, 2015) was a landmark study of Detective Fiction between the wars. 
The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative – and readable – study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors – from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell – into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.

Now revised and expanded for its first paperback publication, The Life of Crime was the winner of four major prizes for the best critical/biographical book related to crime fiction: the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating Awards; and was shortlisted for both the Agatha and Gold Dagger Awards In this groundbreaking history of crime fiction, acclaimed expert Martin Edwards traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering a brand-new perspective on the world's most popular form of storytelling. &#65279;The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of mystery fiction from around the world. Martin Edwards has drawn on his experience as an award-winning novelist to capture the breadth and complexity of crime writing, telling the story of the genre's development and evolution in a way that will fascinate and entertain anyone who delights in a good mystery. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever, The Life of Crime reveals the writers' secrets and the ups and downs of their literary lives with insight, compassion and wit. This definitive distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes compelling reading. 'Martin Edwards is the closest thing there has been to a philosopher of crime writing' THE TIMES

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

The Golden Age of Murder: The new and updated edition of the ultimate guide to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction telling the true story of legends like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and more

Humor & Entertainment

Harry Devlin is playing a dangerous game when he gets involved with the wife of Liverpool's most ruthless villain. But he has another reason to look over his shoulder after two lawyers are brutally killed and Harry discovers he is being stalked by a stranger with a secret obsession.

First Cut Is the Deepest

TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

Third novel in the highly-acclaimed Harry Devlin crime series When Liverpool solicitor Harry Devlin watches fire destroy the studio of his client, tattooist Finbar Rogan, he suspects it is no accident. And when a bomb is planted under Finbar's car, Harry is left in no doubt. Someone hates Finbar enough to want him dead. Meanwhile, another client is provoking Devlin's curiosity. Why should Rosemary Graham-Brown and her husband suddenly be so anxious to leave their luxurious home and emigrate to Spain? After a brutal murder occurs, the two puzzles become interlinked. Piecing the clues together, Harry finally comes face to face with the shocking truth at a fatal confrontation on a foggy Hallowe'en.

I Remember You

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

New English Library

Oxford historian and TV personality Daniel Kind and his new lover, Miranda, both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy Tarn Cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District that Daniel knew as a boy. He is still fascinated by a place so remote that the dead had to be carried out over the peaks on pack animals along the ancient Coffin Trail. Though the couple hope to live the dream of downshifting, the past has a way of catching up. Tarn Cottage was once home to Barrie Gilpin, an autistic youth suspected of a savage murder - what looks like the ritualistic killing of a young woman visitor to the valley. She was found laid out on the Sacrifice Stone, an ancient pagan site up on the fell. Barrie fell to his death near the crime scene before he could be questioned. All these years later, Daniel retains his belief in Barrie's innocence and questions his own policeman father's handling of the case. When DCI Hannah Scarlett and her squad launch a cold case review, Brackdale's skeletons begin to rattle . The wild geography of the Lakes District plays against local literary references, all backdrop to the lives of villagers and outsiders drawn to this beautiful spot but for what reasons? The Coffin Trail launches a new series by a master British hand.

The Coffin Trail [Standard Large Print 16 Pt Edition]

ReadHowYouWant

Martin Edwards . . . writes terrific crime novels about Harry Devlin, a charming but down-at-heel solicitor with bruised emotions, a nice line in self-deprecation, and a penchant for Mersey low-life."—The Guardian When Liverpool solicitor and detective Harry Devlin takes on a client who has been taping his wife's telephone conversations with her lover, he gets more than he bargained for. The first mystery is the identity of Becky's boyfriend, whose voice Harry finds oddly familiar. Then, as a case of adultery slides frighteningly into conspiracy to murder, a trespasser makes a shocking discovery: three dead bodies in a converted church. Who are they? Who has killed them, and why? Trapped in a maze where neither victims nor apparent culprit are who they seem to be, Harry must go into the dark places of the human heart to find the answers.

Eve of Destruction: (A Harry Devlin Mystery)

W.W.Norton & Co

When Liverpool solicitor and detective Harry Devlin takes on a client who has been taping his wife's telephone conversations with her lover, he gets more than he bargained for. Trapped in a maze where neither victims nor apparent culprit are who they seem to be, Harry must go into the dark places of the human heart to find the answers.

Eve of Destruction: A Harry Devlin Mystery (Harry Devlin Mysteries)

W.W.Norton&Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Edwards, Martin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Edwards, Martin

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Edwards, Martin. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Golden Age of Murder

The Golden Age of Murder

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators

The Golden Age of Murder: The new and updated edition of the ultimate guide to the Golden Age of Detective Fiction telling the true story of legends like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and more

First Cut Is the Deepest

I Remember You

The Coffin Trail [Standard Large Print 16 Pt Edition]

Eve of Destruction: (A Harry Devlin Mystery)

Eve of Destruction: A Harry Devlin Mystery (Harry Devlin Mysteries)