Review: The CWA Vintage Crime Anthology, Edited by Martin Edwards

Publication date: Aug 2020

Fiction: FICTION / Thrillers / Crime
Product format: Paperback
Price: £9.95; $14.95
ISBN: 978-1-78758-547-8

Series: Fiction Without Frontiers
Imprint: FLAME TREE PRESS
Distribution: Marston Book Services

Available in HARDBACK, PAPERBACK and
EBOOK editions

Vintage Crimes will be a CWA anthology with a difference, celebrating
members’ work over the years. The book will gather stories from the mid-
1950s until the twenty-first century by great names of the past, great names of the present together with a few hidden treasures by less familiar writers. The first CWA anthology, Butcher’s Dozen, appeared in 1956, and was co-edited by Julian Symons, Michael Gilbert, and Josephine Bell. The anthology has been edited by Martin Edwards since 1996, and has yielded many award winning and nominated stories in the UK and overseas.
This new edition includes an array of incredible and award-winning authors:
Robert Barnard, Simon Brett, Liza Cody, Mat Coward, John Dickson
Carr, Marjorie Eccles, Martin Edwards, Kate Ellis, Anthea Fraser,
Celia Fremlin, Frances Fyfield, Michael Gilbert, Paula Go sling,
Lesley Grant- Adamson, HRF Keating, Bill Knox, Peter Lovesey, Mick
Herron, Michael Z. Lewin, Susan Mo o dy, Julian Symons and Andrew
Taylor.

My Review

Thanks to Flame Tree Press and Rachel for organising this blog tour and for sending me a copy of this book.

This book is an anthology of short crime stories from the twentieth century. The stories have a mix of time settings, although they skew quite heavily post-war, and are very ‘British’. There’s nice ladies who kill various relatives and love rivals, and gentlemen who aren’t quite gentlemanly, professional sleuths and amateurs. The mix was entertaining and I read about half of it in an afternoon. There was a short story to appeal to fans of many sub-genres of crime fiction, but none of the thriller/psychological variety. ‘Vintage’ is a very good title for this book. Even the stories with a more modern setting or a later writing date have the feel of a Agatha Christie-esque story.

The only one I really didn’t like was the final short story, by Mick Herron, but I don’t like his stuff anyway.

The writing in all these stories is good, the plots are varying and not obvious. I was definitely engaged in reading them. I liked dipping in and out before I had my marathon reading afternoon.

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Martin Edwards (editor) is the author of eighteen novels, including the Lake District Mysteries, and the Harry Devlin series. His ground-breaking genre study The Golden Age of Murder has won the Edgar, Agatha, and H.R.F. Keating awards. He has edited twenty eight crime anthologies, has won the CWA Short Story Dagger and the CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and is series consultant for the British Library’s Crime Classics.