Ed. Martin Edwards – Crimes of Cymru (2023)

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!

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Review

This is the second collection I’ve read from the British Library Crime Classics series, for which Martin Edwards is a prolific editor, in particular of twentieth-century short fiction collections. (The first was focused on scientific mysteries.) When I was writing The Meinir Davies Casebook, I didn’t manage to squeeze a Welsh-based story in, but it was definitely on my mind, and so it was nice to read this collection of stories in Wales/by other Welsh authors.

As with the first collection I read, there are some minor errors in the introductory passages and dates given. I try not to be too judgmental about these sorts of things because writing and editing is hard, and we all know that there is always a mistake found immediately after something is published. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still find it a bit irritating.

This is an interesting collection of C20 fiction, and I don’t think I’d read any of the particular stories before. A particular favourite towards the end was Christianna Brand’s “No More A-Maying”, as I love a story that leaves the reader to connect the final dots, but there are heists (“The Strong Room”, Cledwyn Hughes) and the stir-craziness of close-knit communities with long memories (“The Chosen One”, Rhys Davies), as well as the fascinating Poirot precursor of “The Murder in Judd Lane” (Frank Howel Evans) and an action-packed romp through ecclesiastical disputes in “Murder in Church” (GDH and M Cole). I thought this was a really successful collection, which wends its way nicely around the question of whether Welsh crime is crime written by Welsh people, crime in Wales, or both.

I’ll be turning to these again, I think, as I start writing my next set of Meinir Davies stories—once I’ve finished off the mystery novel partially set in South Wales, of course!

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If you like short fiction, take a look at my collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies: order now!