The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators

(Hardback)

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Nominated for the 2023 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical book.
In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the worlds most popular form of fiction.

Author Martin Edwards is a multi-award-winning crime novelist, the President of the Detection Club, archivist of the Crime Writers Association and series consultant to the British Librarys highly successful series of crime classics, and therefore uniquely qualified to write this book. He has been a widely respected genre commentator for more than thirty years, winning the CWA Diamond Dagger for making a significant contribution to crime writing in 2020, when he also compiled and published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club and the novel Mortmain Hall. His critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder (Collins Crime Club, 2015) was a landmark study of Detective Fiction between the wars.

The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative and readable study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.

Reviews

Magisterial but wickedly entertaining reliably readable and frequently amusing. It also inspires awe: Edwards combines wide reading with a good memory, meticulous control over his unruly material, critical acumen and sheer bloody persistence. ANDREW TAYLOR, THE SPECTATOR

As entertaining and illuminating a history of crime and thriller fiction as Ive ever read. IAN RANKIN

Impressively scholarly and joyfully anecdotal its hard to imagine this book being superseded for many years to come. MORNING STAR

Vastly entertaining [Edwards] plots the development of the genre and the bizarre lives of writers Youll find all your favourites here, from Edgar Allan Poe to PD James But be warned youll end up with a reading list as long as a giants arm. DENIS MANN, DAILY EXPRESS

A magisterial history of mysteries and their creators. THE TIMES

There is plenty here for mystery readers, whether well-versed in the genres history or not and mystery writers will welcome this book as a resource.
THE NEW YORK TIMES

A magisterial work THE LIFE OF CRIME does more than just inform, entertain and provoke, it also sends new readers back to old books.
THE WASHINGTON POST

REVIEWS FOR MARTIN EDWARDS:

Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight so enthusiastically and, for the reader, so enjoyably THE TIMES

Illuminating and entertaining provides a new way of looking at old favourites. I admire the way that Martin Edwards weaves the sometimes violent, sometimes unlawful, and always gripping true stories of these writers with the equally wild tales they tell in their books. LEN DEIGHTON, author of The Ipcress File

Forensically sharp and exhaustively informed Crime fiction is driven by death. In this superbly compendious and entertaining book, Edwards ensures that dozens of authorial corpses are gloriously reborn. MARK LAWSON, Guardian

Author Bio

Martin Edwards is an award-winning crime novelist whose Lake District Mysteries have been optioned by ITV. Elected to the Detection Club in 2008, he became the first Archivist of the Club, and is also Archivist of the Crime Writers Association. In addition to 17 crime novels, he has published eight non-fiction books and is a noted commentator on the genre. Renowned as the leading expert on the history of Golden Age detective fiction, he won the Crimefest Mastermind Quiz three times, and possesses one of Britains finest collections of Golden Age novels, including unique inscribed books and manuscripts, notably the previously unknown handwritten study made by Dorothy L. Sayers of the case of Constance Kent and Inspector Whicher.