2015: The Publications

In 2015, I published a non-fiction book, a novel, four anthologies and three short stories, as well as introducing a raft of classic crime novels. Quite a year, then. But of course, the appearance of so many books so quickly is partly due to coincidence. I've been working on one of them in particular for a very long time. In May, The Golden Age of Murder, the product of so many years of reading and research (and indeed writing) finally made an appearance. I'd spent most of those years expecting it would be published by a small press, and reaching a modest readership. It felt like a niche project, not exactly self-indulgent,,perhaps, but not like a book of mass appeal. Yet it has proved, in terms of hardback sales and the number and quality of reviews, to be the most successful book I've ever written. I never anticipated this, but I'm very, very happy about it.

I've tried to analyse why it's happened, and the reviews (nearly one hundred of them now: incredible) do supply a few clues. I suppose the answer is something to do with a revival of interest in classic crime, and something to do with the fact that, whatever else may be said about it, The Golden Age of Murder is an unusual and idiosyncratic book. Yes, it's non-fiction, but there is a lot of me (or rather, what fascinates me) in it, and this has proved to be less of a disadvantage than I might have thought. What I'm really pleased about is the breadth of the book's appeal - not just to died-in-the-wool Golden Age fans, but all sorts of readers and reviewers, and indeed a surprising number of contemporary writers, some of whom have been so kind as to send me personal messages which usually include the phrase "I never knew that..."

The Dungeon House, sixth of the Lake District Mysteries, appeared more recently, and I've been gladdened by two things. First, readers have responded well to the fact that this novel differs in some ways from earlier entries in the series. Second, my fiction seems to be reaching a wider audience than in the past. This was helped the other day by a Kindle Daily Deal on three books in the series, which saw them briefly occupying places in the top 15 Kindle bestsellers list. I'm accustomed to my novels not selling in vast numbers (to put it mildly), but things definitely seem to be moving in the right direction.

For the CWA, I put together an anthology of essays about real life crimes, Truly Criminal, published by the History Press. In comparison to my other books this year, it hasn't received widespread attention, or achieved large sales, but I feel that the quality of the contributions (three of them written by winners of the CWA Diamond Dagger) deserves to ensure its longevity. Nothing very like it has been produced for many years, and I'm hopeful that it's a book whose reputation will keep growing..

As well as introducing classic crime books published by the British Library, I've contributed intros to the welcome reprint of Hugh Conway's Called Back and also to a second Arcturus anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories. For the BL I've also edited three anthologies of short stories. Both Capital Crimes and Resorting to Murder outsold any of the other anthologies I've edited - by a long way - and recently Silent Nights has become one of the most successful titles in the series. It seems already to be one of the bestselling crime anthologies published in Britain in recent decades..Something else my crystal ball never foretold...

On the short story front, I was glad to contribute to Murder Squad's Starlings (a story that was barely criminous, and influenced by my love of the work of Robert Aickman) and Maxim Jakubowski's anthologies of stories about Professor Moriarty and Jack the Ripper respectively.

So what does next year have in store? If you'd like to know, take a look at the blog tomorrow...

Silent Nights - selling like hot cakes!

I'm delighted to say that my third anthology of Golden Age crime fiction, Silent Nights, has just been published by the British Library in its Crime Classics series. And I'm absolutely thrilled to say that, even before publication, the first print run had sold out, and there was a large scale reprint making the book - already - the most commercially successful of the many anthologies that I've edited.

The book is a collection of Christmas mysteries, and of course our hope is that, like Mystery in White last year, this book will become a popular stocking-filler. From my point of view, it is fascinating to see that the British Library has, in the course of this year, successfully challenged the received wisdom of the publishing world that "short story collections don't sell". The danger of taking such a view is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You would not, perhaps, believe how difficult I've found it at times to interest publishers in contemporary anthologies with a range of stellar authors contributing quite splendid original stories. But  I am sure that many readers love short stories just as much as I do, and I'm enormously grateful that the British Library phenomenon has proved that it is perfectly possible to enthuse a large number of readers about an anthology.

Is this just a Christmas-present buying phenomenon? The answer is an emphatic no, because Capital Crimes and Resorting to Murder have been selling exceptionally well throughout the summer, and now into the autumn. I've had a huge amount of very positive feedback about both collections, and I hope that Silent Nights will also offer a bit of something for everyone who likes an engaging crime story with a seasonal flavouring.

As usual, I've tried to blend major authors, and stories that have been anthologised before, with some mysteries that will be unfamiliar to almost everyone. One story in particular stands out in my mind. It's a very obscure story called "Parlour Tricks" by the equally obscure Ralph Plummer. About a year ago, Bob Adey drew it to my attention, sending me a copy from his own amazing collection. He and I had been discussing holiday mysteries in the context of my research for Resorting to Murder, but the story gave me the idea for a Yuletide anthology. Sadly, Bob died before he could see the book, but I like to think that he would have enjoyed it.

Truly Criminal - a true crime collection, and thoughts about anthologies

Anthologies have always appealed to me. When I was quite young, I came across the CWA anthology, in those days edited by Herbert Harris, and never dreamed that one day I'd edit CWA collections myself. This I have now been doing for about twenty years. But until now, I've never produced an anthology composed exclusively of true crime essays. The time felt ripe to tackle such a project, and the result is Truly Criminal, which has just been published (very attractively indeed) by The History Press.

I'm really pleased with this book. Of course, I would say that, wouldn't I? But I do think it offers much that is unusual and intriguing. The range of contributions is terrific. We have essays by several stellar names, including this year's CWA Diamond Dagger winner, Catherine Aird, Peter Lovesey, and Andrew Taylor, plus CWA Non-fiction Gold Dagger winner Paul French. The foreword has been written by Peter James.

There are notable contributions by familiar names in the true crime field, like Kate Clarke, Linda Stratmann and Diane Janes, as well as excellent pieces by novelists Quentin Bates and Peter Guttridge, and a Shetland story by Shetland-based Marsali Taylor. A couple of contributions come from foreign members.

My own effort tackles the "Blazing Car" murder of 1930, a crime that has long fascinated me. It inspired a number of Golden Age stories, as did the Brides in the Bath case, which is the subject of Peter Lovesey's highly original essay, the Maybrick case, covered admirably by Kate Ellis, and the Wallace case, the subject of a recently discovered essay by Margery Allingham (who was a CWA member as well as a member of the Detection Club.).

It's often said - especially by gloomy publishers - that the market for anthologies is very limited. I'm not sure that's right. A book with a pleasing mix of ingredients can have a very widespread appeal. For proof of this, I can't resist mentioning my first two anthologies for the British Library - Capital Crimes and Resorting to Murder. Sales figures for these newly published books are already very high, and in fact higher than those of any previous anthology I've edited. Seems extraordinary, but it's true. And I hope that Truly Criminal will also find a receptive readership. It's a different sort of collection, and the contributors have done a wonderful job in telling their tales.

Antidote to Venom - another Crime Classic

It's less than two years since I wrote on this blog about Freeman Wills Crofts' novel Antidote to Venom, and expressed the view that it was a book definitely worth seeking out. Well, anyone who likes the sound of the book will now find it much more easily, as it has just been republished as part of the British Library's Crime Classics series.

I mentioned on Monday that the publication of my British Library anthology Capital Crimes has been brought forward because of the scale of advance sales, and the same is true of Antidote to Venom. I've supplied this edition with an intro which outlines why I like the book, but it's perhaps worth adding a few words here.

One of the things I admire most in a writer is a willingness to abandon one's literary comfort zone, and try something different, and ambitious. I've often given the example of Anthony Berkeley, who in his Francis Iles novels in particular was trying to write a crime story of a new sort. A book like Before the Fact is deeply flawed, but for me, it's still worth ten pedestrian detective stories, because it was such a daring story idea.

The same is true here - and not only because of the very intriguing zoo setting. Crofts was being very ambitious with this book, and I don't regard it is a total success. But I found it a gripping read, and I am impressed that such a successful author was prepared to try to write about complex issues of good and evil in the context of an elaborate murder mystery. This is the reason why I was so keen for the British Library to republish the book.

I should say that in my role as Series Consultant, I come up with many book and author suggestions that aren't viable for one reason or another, and the Library also keeps digging into the vaults and finding books I wasn't aware of. But although Crofts was, in his day, a bigger name than Charles Kingston, say, or Mavis Doriel Hay, I'm glad that this book (and soon, The Hog's Back Mystery) are enjoying a new life. He was an interesting writer who deserves to be remembered.

Capital Crimes - publication day!

Today sees the official publication of Capital Crimes, my anthology of London Mysteries for the British Library's series of Crime Classics. The book was scheduled for publication in March, but the amazing success of the Crime Classics series has led to...early release by popular demand! As I understand it, getting towards 5000 copies of the print edition had been bought already in advance of publication. Having edited more than 20 anthologies over the past twenty-odd years, books featuring some of the world's great contemporary writers (Ruth Rendell, Ian Rankin, P.D. James, Colin Dexter, Lawrence Block et al) I can only say that I've never encountered pre-publication sales figures like this for an anthology previously.

If you define "the Golden Age of Murder" as the period between the two world wars, then the timespan of this collection extends beyond the Golden Age, in both directions. We begin with Conan Doyle (but his entry is not a Sherlock Holmes story) and continue until reaching a post-war story by Anthony Gilbert.

The connecting theme is the London setting of the stories, but my aim has been to go for variety. There is an obvious difficulty with putting together a collection of short stories from the past. Some if not all of the contents will be familiar to die-hard fans. It would be wildly optimistic to hope for over a dozen completely forgotten gems. And the need to trace copyright owners for stories that are still in copyright adds a further level of complexity.

All the same, with this anthology, and with others I've been working on for the British Library, I've endeavoured to include at least a couple of stories that I don't think will be familiar to most connoisseurs. In this book, I felt it would be folly to resist the temptation to include such classics as "The Tea Leaf" and "The Avenging Chance", even though they have been anthologised numerous times, because many enthusiastic fans of the Crime Classics series have come quite fresh to traditional detective fiction.

But hands up how many people have read such stories as "They Don't Wear Labels", "Cheese", and "You Can't Hang Twice"...I'm hoping that even many of the well-read followers of this blog will not have come across some or all of this trio of stories before. I've also included a Victorian serial killer story by John Oxenham, and abridged it slightly so that it could be fitted in - a slightly different version of the story has been anthologised in the past, but it's still quite obscure. All in all, I hope that this is a book which will entertain readers who, like me, are fascinated by London life -and by mysterious crimes.

2015: the year ahead

A very happy new year to all readers of this blog. You can never predict what a year may have in store, but one thing is for certain. 2015 will see more new books of mine, of one kind or another, than ever before in a single year. Never mind for a moment whether that's really such a good thing! Let me tell you about them.

I regard myself as a novelist, first and foremost, but the main event will be the publication in the UK and US by Harper Collins of The Golden Age of Murder. It can, I suppose, be described as "narrative non-fiction" - I've used one or two novelistic techniques to turn the factual account of the creation of the Detection Club by a small group of talented and innovative crime writers into a story that tells readers something about the people, their books, and the times in which they lived. I'm hoping above all that the book will interest people in Golden Age fiction even if they've never had much time for it previously.

Still with the Golden Age, I have three anthologies due to be published by the British Library. They are collections with differing themes, and each book includes a couple of stories, at least, which I think will be unfamiliar even to most dedicated fans. Resorting to Murder is a book of holiday mysteries, while Capital Crimes gathers stories set in London. There will also be an anthology of Christmas stories - I'm just about to finish work on this. I've also written a stack of introductions for new books in the Classic Crimes series. Not all of the titles have yet been publicly announced, but they include some very interesting novels.

Turning to fiction, The Dungeon House is ready for editing now, and I'm hoping it will see the light of day in the autumn. It's the seventh Lake District Mystery, and the setting - around the coastal village of Ravenglass - plays a key part in the story. I've structured it rather differently from other books in the series, but I'm hopeful that it will go down well. I feel it's the best book in the series so far.

During the course of the year, I'll be publishing an ebook of short stories, some old, some new, and the provisional title is The Bookbinder's Apprentice and other stories. Jessica Mann has kindly written an introduction. As it happens, I've written a number of short stories recently, and of course I'm hoping that these will find a publisher. Among other projects, I've teamed up with members of Murder Squad and some "accomplices" to write a story inspired by a photo taken by Pembrokeshire photographer David Wilson. At the time of writing this blog, I'm just revising my story, provisionally titled "Through the Mist".

Back to non-fiction. I've just written an intro to a Sherlock Holmes book, and in April, the new CWA anthology will appear. This is Truly Criminal, to be published by The History Press. We have a really good line up of original contributions, and I like to think it's the most significant anthology of true crime essays to have appeared in quite a few years. My piece deals with the "Blazing Car" murder of 1930, and several contributions feature cases that influenced novels of the Golden Age. Peter Lovesey (with a unique take on the "brides in the bath" case), Catherine Aird and Andrew Taylor are among the other authors, and there is a foreword by the best-selling author and former CWA chair, Peter James.

At the moment, I'm working on a book which includes all the detective fiction reviews that Dorothy L. Sayers wrote in a remarkable burst of activity at the height of the Golden Age This project is undertaken on behalf of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, and we have yet to sort out publication details. But the Sayers reviews are brilliant and full of insight, and still read very well. The reviews written by Sayers and a few of her contemporaries are, incidentally, valuable sources of ideas for my Forgotten Books, and they deserve a wider readership.

There are one or two other projects in the works, including one for the Detection Club, and a very exciting non-fiction project. These will not appear in 2015, but they will take up some time during the year. And in case any of my faithful readers are wondering if I mean to fit in a holiday or two in the midst of all this activity, the answer is very definitely...yes!

The British LIbrary, Crime Classics, and the Series Consultant...

The British Library's Crime Classics series is going from strength to strength, and I'm delighted to make one or two personal announcements about it today. First let me mention that the first half of next year will see the appearance of two anthologies of Golden Age fiction edited and introduced by me and forming part of the series. Resorting to Murder focuses on holiday mysteries, while Capital Crimes is a collection of stories set in and around London. I'm hoping these books will introduce a new generation of readers to some of the marvellous short stories published between the wars. Each anthology will include one or two rare stories that I suspect will be unfamiliar to all but the most dedicated specialists.

The Crime Classics series are beautifully produced; even so, I must admit their success has taken my breath away. I've been writing intros for republished crime novels of the past for about twenty years - starting with the late lamented Black Dagger crime series - but there's never been anything remotely this popular until recently (and the success of the Detection Club reprints by Harper Collins, a couple of which feature intros of mine is another welcome sign of the times.)

Who would have thought that novels written by John Bude and J. Jefferson Farjeon would become bestsellers in the twenty-first century? Not me, to be honest. And yet this is the British Library's achievement. A few days ago, Farjeon's Mystery in White reached number 4 in the Waterstones fiction bestseller chart, having risen from number 6 the previous week (Donna Tartt's latest being one place higher) . In the space of two months, 20,000 plus copies have been sold, and I gather that about 95% of this figure is represented by the print edition, rather than ebooks, which in  this day and age is very, very striking. Bear in mind that there is no living author around to promote their work on tours and so on. As for Bude, The Cornish Coast Murder has become the British Library's all-time bestselling book published under its own imprint - remarkable, if one thinks about that.. As of today, I gather it's sold upwards of 40,000 copies in all in about eight months.

The British Library is now looking ahead, and giving careful thought as to how to sustain the remarkable popularity of the Crime Classics. For some time, I've been in discussion with them about possible future titles, and I've been commissioned to write introductions to recently published titles such as Charles Kingston's Murder in Piccadilly and John G. Brandon's A Scream in Soho. The aim of the intros is to offer readers some "added value", and the Library's view is that it's desirable to avoid duplication, so I write different intros for each book, even if the author has appeared in the series before, concentrating on fresh aspects of the author's work.

Other titles in the works include an excellent Bude book, The Sussex Downs Murder, and two particularly interesting novels The Hog's Back Mystery and Antidote to Venom, both by Freeman Wills Crofts. Five further  books are expected to appear in 2015, including a third anthology which I'm working on at present. Various factors (including availability of the rights) govern the actual choices made, but having suggested those two Crofts books, I'm delighted that they are to be republished.

I'm also thrilled to announce that the British Library has appointed me as Series Consultant to the Crime Classics series. It's a relationship which I'm really enjoying, and at long last, I no longer feel like a member of an endangered minority in my enthusiasm for these long-forgotten stories. Whilst I remain absolutely committed to my career as a contemporary novelist, I've been writing about Golden Age fiction for more than a quarter of a century (and reading it for much longer than that). I have never known a time when there was so much interest in the subject, not only in the UK, but much further afield, and this is also reflected in reaction to news of the forthcoming publication of The Golden Age of Murder (now available for pre-order on Amazon, by the way!) Long may it continue..