Silent Nights

Leyla J, Reviewer

This book took me back a long way, filled with short stories of writers of the past, some I knew and some I had not meet before. Each had a short bio of the writer which was really interesting, not all where mysteries but all keep my interest well into the night. It is so fantastic that these writers are finding the light of day again, they can really weave a story, and I would like to thank the publishers for putting time and effort into reprinting these wonderful periods of or reading and writing history. This book was provided in return for a honest and unbiased review.

Like an assortment of presents under a Christmas tree, there's something for everyone in this Yule-themed reprint anthology in the British Library Crime Classics series from Edwards (Guilty Parties). The 15 selections range from stories by such leading lights of the genre's golden age as Arthur Conan Doyle ("The Blue Carbuncle") and Dorothy L. Sayers ("The Necklace of Pearls") to works by such forgotten authors as H.C. Bailey ("The Unknown Murderer") and Ralph Plummer ("Parlour Tricks"). Connoisseurs of locked-room mysteries will welcome Edmund Crispin's "The Name on the Window." Ethel Lina White's "Waxworks" will send shivers down readers' spines, though it contains the now-cliché stopped watch to indicate time of death. In "Stuffing," Edgar Wallace repeats Doyle's prize-in-the-bird trick from "Carbuncle," but this is another quibble. These classic tales of murder and jewel thievery with a light dusting of snow reveal bygone sensibilities, which, by and large, are fun to read about.

This book turned out to be such a treasure trove of "lost" Golden Age mysteries, each one of them evocative of the era and the Christmas season. Nice, fairly difficult to solve puzzles and quirky characters abounded. This made for some wonderfully enjoyable reading!

Since I love a good mystery, I was delighted to find this collection of short stories from the Golden Age of British Crime classics. I was pleased to find a few authors in the book that I had heard of in the past and some that are new to me....Martin Edwards did a nice job of choosing what went into the collection and gave a bit of background information about the authors which added to my enjoyment. The stories are short and easy to read, neatly wrapped up and nicely detailed. There is just something special about reading books from the past that I really enjoy. The style is a bit different, and the people seem to always be most courteous--except when they are the criminal of course!...I highly recommend this wonderful collection.

An anthology of short mysteries by some of the best authors of the Golden Age of British Crime fiction writing, all set on or around Christmas. Any one who is a fan of the classics will love this. I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting authors I have previously read with their stories starring Holmes/Watson & Father Brown among others. I was thrilled to be introduced to authors I haven't read before and will now be looking for more of their work. A great compilation of British Library Crime Classics.

This is a wonderful collection of Golden Age detective stories all set around the festive Christmas season. Martin Edward's Introduction whets the appetite for what's to come and each story is introduced with a useful couple of paragraphs which put the stories in context and give some basic information about each author....Because it's an anthology of different authors you never know what's coming next and the styles are so varied. I really appreciated the opportunity to sample a range of different styles of writing, and try several authors I hadn't come across before. I will certainly be checking out the books of J. Jefferson Farjeon, H. C. Bailey and Leo Bruce.