Preamble
As I read and write and think a lot about detective and crime fiction, I review on the theme. Sadly, capacity is too limited to cover detective films and TV series too! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
Or you can take a look at my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: order now!
See also
These lists capture other stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- Murder Isn’t Easy: The Forensics of Agatha Christie (Carla Valentine)
Review
This collection forms part of the British Library Crime Classics series, for which Martin Edwards is a prolific editor, in particular of twentieth-century short fiction collections. (I have another one focused on Welsh crime fiction in my TBR pile!) This is a reasonable collection, focused around how authors go about integrating scientific advances into their fiction.
There are some minor errors in the introductory passages, forgivable as copyediting slips. I also find with these sorts of collections that I begin reading something only to recall that I have read it before. (Ironically, this happens especially where editors might be driven to find more unusual tales for inclusion.) This happened once to me this time around, with ‘The Horror of Studley Grange‘ (LT Meade and Robert Eustace), as I at least could recall that I have previously read ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ (Conan Doyle)! As a Victorianist, I’m less well versed in the twentieth-century short fiction that followers these two initial tales, however, and so they were new to me.
There is an interesting combination of ‘official police’ inquiries and doctors and lawyers investigating cases, as well as variation across authors and the length and thus complexity of the stories. I suspect my favourite may have been ‘The Contents of a Mare’s Nest’ (R. Austin Freeman), a tricky tale of death certificates and poisonings, but ‘After Death the Doctor’ (JJ Connington) and ‘In the Teeth of the Evidence’ (Dorothy L Sayers) were also particularly interesting in the way they combine medical science and advances (ophthalmological and dental) with the commission and detection of crime. There are a few faked crimes, as well as faked alibis, going around, but well combined and mixed up, making sure that there is always something for the reader to ponder as an amateur sleuth.
If you like short fiction, take a look at my collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: order now!
Dominique Gracia 
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