Readers' rating:
Published May 2015
528 pages
Genre: Biography/Memoir
Publication Information
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.
Edgar Awards, 2016
"Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight so enthusiastically and, for the reader, so enjoyably" - The Times
"Illuminating and entertaining – provides a new way of looking at old favourites. I admire the way that Martin Edwards weaves the sometimes violent, sometimes unlawful, and always gripping true stories of these writers with the equally wild tales they tell in their books." - Len Deighton, author of SS-GB
"Forensically sharp and exhaustively informed… Crime fiction is driven by death. In this superbly compendious and entertaining book, Edwards ensures that dozens of authorial corpses are gloriously reborn." - Mark Lawson, The Guardian
"Edwards knows his business. He understands how to parcel out the clues and red herrings so as to feed the reader enough information to keep a variety of possibilities open, while making sure to prepare for a satisfying solution." - Seattle Post
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Martin Edwards has published eighteen crime novels, including series set in Liverpool and the Lake District. He has won the CWA Short Story Dagger and CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and his latest book, The Golden Age of Murder, won the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity and H.R.F.Keating awards. Martin is consultant for the British Library's Classic Crime series, as well as Chair of the CWA and President of the Detection Club. He has edited 30 anthologies, published about 60 short stories, and written seven other non-fiction books.
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