Bodies from the Library 3: Forgotten Stories of Mystery and Suspense by the Queens of Crime and Other Masters of the Golden Age

by Tony Medawar (Editor), Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley

Overview

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 18 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including uncollected stories by Ngaio Marsh and John Dickson Carr.

The Golden Age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E.C. Bentley’s schismatic Trent’s Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts – latterly crowned queen and king of the genre – had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.

This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of 18 prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the Golden Age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction – stories, serials and plays – and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away…

In this book you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers and Henri Bencolin; Hercule Poirot solves ‘The Incident of the Dog’s Ball’; Roderick Alleyn returns to New Zealand in a recently discovered television drama by Ngaio Marsh; and Dorothy L. Sayers’ chilling ‘The House of the Poplars’ is published for the first time.

With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr and an unpublished radio script by Cyril Hare, this diverse collection concludes with some early ‘flash fiction’ commissioned by Collins’ Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and – in his only foray into writing detective fiction – the publisher himself, William Collins.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780008380960
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	01/11/2022
Series:	Bodies from the Library Series , #3
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	498,828
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Editor Tony Medawar is a detective fiction expert and researcher with a penchant for tracking down rare stories. His other collections of previously uncollected stories include WHILE THE LIGHT LASTS (Agatha Christie), THE AVENGING CHANCE (Anthony Berkeley), THE SPOTTED CAT (Christianna Brand), A SPOT OF FOLLY (Ruth Rendell) and THE ISLAND OF COFFINS (John Dickson Carr).

Table of Contents

Introduction vii

Some Little Things 1

Lynn Brock 15

Hot Steel 19

Anthony Berkeley 24

The Murder at Warbeck Hall 27

Cyril Hare 47

The House of the Poplars 49

Dorothy L. Sayers 68

The Hampstead Murder 71

Christopher Bush 85

The Scarecrow Murders 89

Joseph Commings 112

The Incident of the Dog's Ball 115

Agatha Christie 137

The Case of the Unlucky Airman 139

Christopher St John Sprigg 152

The Riddle of the Black Spade 155

Stuart Palmer 177

A Torch at the Window 181

Josephine Bell 197

Grand Guignol 201

John Dickson Carr 265

A Knotty Problem 269

Ngaio Marsh 310

The Orange Plot Mysteries: 313

The Orange Kid 315

Peter Cheyney 323

And the Answer Was … 325

Ethel Lina White 333

He Stooped to Live 335

David Hume 342

Mr Prendergast and the Orange 345

Nicholas Blake 352

The Yellow Sphere 353

John Rhode 360

The 'Eat More Fruit' Murder 363

William A. R. Collins 370

Acknowledgements 373

Editorial Reviews

‘Tony Medawar triumphs again with this treasure trove of lost Golden Age gems.’—John Curran, author of The Hooded Gunman

'For the third year running it has been an annual treat – almost like the summer version of a Christie for Christmas.' Kate Jackson, author of The Pocket Detective

From the Publisher