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The stories have been arranged in developmental, roughly chronologic, sequence. We begin with an appearance by Sherlock Holmes, still the beacon by which all that happens in the English Country House Mystery is guided. Then follow some early accounts, showing the influences of Walpole, Burns, and other romantic novelists. Then several classical accounts, from the rivals of Sherlock Holmes through the work of one of the last great ladies of the English mystery, Christianna Brand. Some important variants are interspersed, most notably: the inverted story, in which the perpetrator and his methods are known, and the means of detection alone engages us; the Country House Mystery as humor and satire, with P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves as the pluperfect servant ensnared in the crime; the English Country House Gothic thriller, in which whodunit and how are subordinated to scaring the stuffing out of the poor reader. At the conclusion, there are few end-of-the-cycle Country House mysteries where the postwar realities assert themselves quite strongly. And then, a sweet to conclude: Holmes again, in a final bow to the tradition. - Introduction. 22 stories by Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, G.K. Chesterton, Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, P.D. James, and others.… (more)
User reviews
Later stories are much better - there's a Father Brown I don't think I'd read, and one of my favorite Lord Peter Wimsey stories. Good, but not a good reason to read this book.
The later ones are, some of them, somewhat interesting - there are a few authors I'll look for more from. But a lot of them seem to go in for horror rather than mystery - or at least, plenty of gore. Not my cup of tea.
It's not bad, but I'm not keeping it. The good parts are familiar from elsewhere and the bad ones outnumber them (for me! If you're addicted to locked-room mysteries, you'd probably love a lot of these).
English Country House Murders
Edited by Sir Thomas Godfrey
Wonderful anthology of English “country house murders”, in the style perfected by Agatha Christie. The stories are fine, but the best part is the hilarious intro, which includes a tongue-in-cheek list of “rules”, i.e.:
I loved it. Just writing this makes me want to pick it up again (I got this as a library book, but later bought the paperback version at Barnes & Noble).
I thoroughly enjoyed this set of short stories and can highly recommend them.
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Fic Mystery |