Kirjahaku

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.

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 shortlisted for both the Agatha and Gold Dagger Awards. ‘Martin Edwards is the closest thing there has been to a philosopher of crime writing.’ The Times 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. 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

The new and updated 10 year anniversary edition Winner of the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating crime-writing awards, this definitive account of the secretive Detection Club and its trail-blazing founders told for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two World Wars. ‘Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight’ THE TIMES A gripping real-life detective story, The Golden Age of Murder investigates how Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie and their contemporaries both competed and collaborated to turn the genre into a literary powerhouse that still dominates popular fiction today. Written in times of social and political turmoil, their books cast new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to the authors’ darkest secrets and their complex and sometimes bizarre private lives. Ten years since its first publication, Martin Edwards – now the Detection Club’s President and author of subsequent award-winning publications including Howdunit and the monumental The Life of Crime – revisits the story with major updates, new revelations and four brand new chapters that no crime connoisseur will want to miss. ‘Illuminating and entertaining – provides a new way of looking at old favourites’ LEN DEIGHTON

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.

Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) practice periodic surveillance of members to ensure that countries are adopting appropriate economic policies. Despite the importance of these procedures, they remain understudied by scholars. The global economic crisis has tested both organizations and brought surveillance to the forefront of policy debates. Understanding how surveillance works, then, contributes to both theoretical and policy concerns.The world is paying increasing attention to issues of transparency and accountability, questioning whether these organizations are in part responsible for the global economic crisis, as well as assessing their responsiveness to the crisis. This comparative analysis of surveillance at the IMF and WTO fills a significant gap in the existing literature, drawing together a large range of empirical data and offering an extended critical analysis of this key issue.Examining how and in what contexts surveillance is influential and how variations in institutional design shape the effectiveness of surveillance, Edwards moves on to offer recommendations of how surveillance can be designed differently to make it more effective in the future. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, international political economy and global governance.

The English country house is an iconic setting for some of the greatest British crime fiction. Short stories are an important part of this tradition, and writers from Agatha Christie to Margery Allingham became famous for the intricate cases which their detectives unravelled in rambling country houses. These stories continue to enjoy wide appeal, driven partly by nostalgia for a vanished way of life, and partly by the pleasure of trying to solve a fiendishly clued puzzle. This new collection gathers together stories written over a span of about 65 years, during which British society, and life in country houses, was transformed out of all recognition. It includes fascinating and unfamiliar twists on the classic 'closed circle' plot, in which the assorted guests at a country house party become suspects when a crime is committed. In the more sinister tales featured here, a gloomy mansion set in lonely grounds offers an eerie backdrop for dark deeds, as in Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Copper Beeches' and W. W. Jacobs' 'The Well'. Many distinguished writers are represented in this collection, including such great names of the genre as Anthony Berkeley, Nicholas Blake and G.K. Chesterton. As with his previous anthologies in the Crime Classics series, Martin Edwards has also unearthed hidden gems and forgotten masterpieces: among them are a fine send-up of the country house murder, 'The Murder at the Towers'; a suspenseful tale by the unaccountably neglected Ethel Lina White; and a story by the little-known Scottish writer J.J. Bell.

The main aim of detective stories is to entertain, but the best cast a light on human behaviour, and display both literary ambition and accomplishment. Even unpretentious detective stories, written for unashamedly commercial reasons, can give us clues to the past, and give us insight into a long-vanished world that, for all its imperfections, continues to fascinate. This book, written by award-winning crime writer and president of the Detection Club, Martin Edwards, serves as a companion to the British Library's internationally acclaimed series of Crime Classics. Long-forgotten stories republished in the series have won a devoted new readership, with several titles entering the bestseller charts and sales outstripping those of highly acclaimed contemporary thrillers.

The Lake District's cold case specialist, DCI Hannah Scarlett, is determined to uncover the truth behind Bethany Friend's apparent suicide in the Serpent Pool. Why would Bethany, so afraid of water, drown herself? Hannah fears that her partner, bookseller Marc Amos, is keeping dark secrets. Does he hold the key to Bethany's past - and why was his best customer burnt to death in an Ullswater boathouse? Hannah still carries a torch for Daniel Kind, who is researching Thomas De Quincey and the history of murder. Once Daniel and Hannah suspect connections between Bethany's drowning and a current sequence of killings, death comes dangerously close to home.

Twenty years after her brother Callum mysteriously vanished, Orla Payne is still haunted by his disappearance. The case was closed after her uncle's suicide - the police believed he killed himself in the Hanging Wood out of guilt over murdering the boy, even though no body was ever found. Daniel Kind recommends Orla contact DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the Lake District's Cold Case Review Team, to see if she can discover the truth about what really happened all those years ago. In spite of the DCI's doubt there is anything to be done on such a long-dead case, when Orla is found dead, she reconsiders, partly out of sense of duty and partly out of guilt, and discovers that investigating the past can throw up some very dangerous truths indeed.

Death has already come twice to Ravenbank, a remote Lake District community. Before the First World War a young woman's corpse was found, a makeshift shroud frozen to her battered face. Then five years ago, another woman was murdered in the same grisly manner.When a third death is visited on Ravenbank at Hallowe'en, Daniel Kind, a specialist in the history of murder, becomes fascinated by the old cases. Surely this new incident is linked to the earlier killings? In a race against time, Daniel and the Cold Case Review Team, lead by DCI Hannah Scarlett, join forces to solve the puzzling mystery.

Twenty years ago, Malcolm Whiteley discovers his attractive wife Lysette is having an affair. The Whiteleys are wealthy, and live with their 16-year-old daughter Amber in the magnificent Dungeon House, overlooking Cumbria's remote western coast. But Malcolm is under financial and emotional pressure, and he begins to disintegrate psychologically, suspecting the men in their circle of being Lysette's lover. When Lysette tells Malcolm their marriage is over, he snaps, and takes out the old Winchester rifle he has been hiding from Lysette... Back to the present day, and Hannah Scarlett's cold case team are looking into the three-year-old mystery of the disappearance of Lily Elstone, whose father was Malcolm Whiteley's accountant. Their investigation coincides with the disappearance of another teenage girl, Shona Whiteley, daughter of Malcolm's nephew Nigel. Nigel now lives in the Dungeon House, despite its tragic history. Twenty years earlier, Malcolm shot his wife and apparently killed his daughter before shooting himself. But as Hannah's team dig down into the past, doubts arise about what exactly happened at the Dungeon House twenty years ago...

DCI Hannah Scarlett is an acknowledged expert in solving cold cases, but is struggling under the weight of bureaucracy when Ramona Smith's disappearance from Bowness more than twenty years ago crosses her desk. The prime suspect was charged but found not guilty. Now the case has come back into the public eye as the result of a shocking tragedy on the Crooked Shore, the fount of dark legends in the south of the Lake District. Tensions mount in the summer heat as a ruthless killer, who has already got away with one murder, plans further appalling crimes. Hannah finds herself racing against the clock as she strives to solve the mysteries and save innocent lives.

DCI Hannah Scarlett is an acknowledged expert in solving cold cases, but she is struggling under the weight of bureaucracy when Ramona Smith's disappearance from Bowness more than twenty years ago crosses her desk. The prime suspect was charged but found not guilty. Now the case has come back into the public eye as the result of a shocking tragedy on the Crooked Shore, the fount of dark legends south of the Lake District. A ruthless killer, who has already got away with one murder, plans further appalling crimes. DCI Scarlett finds herself racing against the clock as she strives to solve the mysteries and save innocent lives.

Daniel Kind's relationship with Miranda is on the rocks. After the bright lights of London, Miranda feels isolated in the Lake District and Daniel fears that she will just up and leave. And Miranda wouldn't be the first: ten years ago Emma Bestwick left her cottage and never returned. Her disappearance went unaccounted for, much to the chagrin of DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of the local Cold Case Review Team. But in a small, rural community, someone is bound to know something. And that someone has recently started calling the local newspaper and dropping hints about Emma's death. With the case reopened, Hannah and Daniel are drawn together again, and discover to their cost that one person will preserve the secrets of the past at any price.

In the peaceful village of Old Sawrey, set in the idyllic Lake District, a murderer strikes. Warren Howe, a husband and father of two, is brutally slaughtered with his own scythe by a mysterious hooded figure. The police manage to identify several suspects, but due to the lack of evidence they fail to make an arrest. Years later an anonymous tip-off sparks the interest of DCI Hannah Scarlett, who heads the local Cold Case Review Team. Scarlett's investigations lead her to suspect Howe's widow, Tina. Meanwhile, someone is sending vicious poison pen letters to Tina and her two children. With the help of a historian, and his information on the goings on in his unusual garden, Inspector Scarlett delves deeper and deeper in her quest for the truth, discovering old sins that are casting long shadows. The clues are eventually pieced together, leading to a shocking revelation that will change Hannah's life forever.

Oxford historian Daniel Kind and his partner Miranda both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy a cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District. But though they hope to live the dream, the past soon catches up with them. Tarn Cottage was once home to Barrie Gilpin, suspected of a savage murder. A young woman's body was found on the Sacrifice Stone, an ancient pagan site up on the fell, but Barrie died before he could be arrested. Daniel has personal reasons for becoming fascinated by the case and for believing in Barrie's innocence. When the police launch a cold case review, Brackdale's skeletons begin to rattle and the lives of Daniel and DCI Hannah Scarlett become strangely entwined. Daniel and Hannah each find themselves risking their lives as they search for a ruthless murderer who is prepared to kill again to hide a shocking secret.

Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) practice periodic surveillance of members to ensure that countries are adopting appropriate economic policies. Despite the importance of these procedures, they remain understudied by scholars. The global economic crisis has tested both organizations and brought surveillance to the forefront of policy debates. Understanding how surveillance works, then, contributes to both theoretical and policy concerns.The world is paying increasing attention to issues of transparency and accountability, questioning whether these organizations are in part responsible for the global economic crisis, as well as assessing their responsiveness to the crisis. This comparative analysis of surveillance at the IMF and WTO fills a significant gap in the existing literature, drawing together a large range of empirical data and offering an extended critical analysis of this key issue.Examining how and in what contexts surveillance is influential and how variations in institutional design shape the effectiveness of surveillance, Edwards moves on to offer recommendations of how surveillance can be designed differently to make it more effective in the future. This work will be of great interest to students and scholars of international organizations, international political economy and global governance.

A CRITIC CRIME BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 RUNNER UP'Martin Edwards is a true master of British crime writing' RICHARD OSMAN'Combines all the things I love most about crime fiction: atmospheric settings, twisty plots, intriguing characters and an unforgettable protagonist' ELLY GRIFFITHSTEST YOUR WITS AGAINST RACHEL SAVERNAKE!A CLUEFINDER AT THE BACK OF THE BOOK HIGHLIGHTS 47 HINTS IN THE TEXT TO THE SOLUTION OF THE INGENIOUS PUZZLES.Basil Palmer plans to murder a man called Louis Carson. The problem is Palmer doesn't know anything about his victim, including where to find him.After learning that Carson resides in a place called Hemlock Bay, Palmer travels there, posing as Dr Seamus Doyle and plotting murder along the way.Meanwhile, after hearing a psychic has predicted a murder will take place in Hemlock Bay, amateur sleuth Rachel Savernake sets off, determined to discover the serpent that has slithered into this idyllic Eden.When murder does occur at the resort, and after meeting a mysterious doctor called Seamus, Rachel finds herself entering a maze of intricate mysteries – just where she likes to be…The fifth ingenious Rachel Savernake Golden Age Mystery, which can be read in any order, for fans of Ann Cleeves, Sophie Hannah and AK Benedict.'Superbly satisfying... Golden age murder, subtly subverted period, clues galore and a hint of Gothic' KATE GRIFFIN'Rachel Savernake is a hero to cherish' NICOLA UPSONDISCOVER THE REST OF THIS INCREDIBLE SERIES#1 GALLOWS COURT#2 MORTMAIN HALL#3 BLACKSTONE FELL#4 SEPULCHRE STREET#5 HEMLOCK BAYPraise for Martin Edwards'Crime fiction is blessed to have Martin Edwards.' NEW YORK TIMES'Highly recommended, with a touch of the gothic.' ANN CLEEVES'Martin Edwards celebrates and satirises the genre with wit and affection... He leaves you wanting more.' THE TIMES'The brilliant Savernake is a fascinatingly enigmatic character.' WASHINGTON POST'Martin Edwards holds his own with the best of classic crime.' DAILY MAIL'Reads as if Ruth Rendell were channelling Edgar Wallace.' MICK HERRON'If you haven’t yet discovered Martin Edwards’ books, you are in for a treat. His books are wonderful, filled with compelling characters, smart plots, great writing.' LOUISE PENNYReaders love Hemlock Bay!'Thoroughly entertaining murder mystery''Very clever''I love everything about the Rachel Savernake series''Martin Edwards just gets better and better''If you love cosy crimes the likes of Miss Marple then Edwards is one you need to read right away'