Monday, January 7, 2019

Continental Crimes edited by Martin Edwards

Continental Crimes 
Martin Edwards, editor
5/5 stars


This is a varied collection of crimes both committed and detected, not necessarily mysterious, but always nefarious.  As is the case with all the British Library Crime Classics, the authors are a mix of Golden Age writers, with a few earlier and later.  I was impressed by the quality of the writing of most of the stories, even when the plot wasn't stellar.


The stories are as follows:
"The New Catacomb" by Arthur Conan Doyle  4/5 stars
"A Bracelet at Bruges" by Arnold Bennett  4/5 stars
"The Secret Garden" by G.K. Chesterton  5/5 stars
"The Secret of the Magnifique" by E. Phillips Oppenheim  4/5 stars
"Petit-Jean" by Ian Hay  5/5 stars
"The Lover of St. Lys" by F. Tennyson Jesse  4/5 stars
"Popeau Intervenes" by Marie Belloc Lowndes  3/5 stars
"The Perfect Murder" by Stacy Aumonier  4/5 stars
"The Room in the Tower" by J. Jefferson Farjeon  4/5 stars
"The Ten-Franc Counter" by H. deVere Stacpoole  3/5 stars
"Have You Got Everything You Want?" by Agatha Christie  4/5 stars
"The Long Dinner" by H. C. Bailey  5/5 stars
"The Packet-Boat Murder" by Josephine Bell  4/5 stars
"Villa Almirante" by Michael Gilbert  3/5 stars

The book deserves five stars for the motley collection of authors and crimes.  The stories themselves average to  four, making the book four and one half stars, which I rounded up to five.


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