Martin Edwards

Oxford historian Daniel Kind and his partner Miranda both want to escape to a new life. On impulse they buy a cottage in Brackdale, an idyllic valley in the Lake District. But though they hope to live the dream, the past soon catches up with them....

Six down-on-their-luck people with links to the world of crime writing have been invited to play a game this Christmas by the mysterious Midwinter Trust. The challenge seems simple but exciting.

A Christmas party is punctuated by a gunshot under a policeman’s watchful eye. A jewel heist is planned amidst the glitz and glamour of Oxford Street’s Christmas shopping....

There is no better hiding place for clues - or red herrings - than inside the pages of a book. With Martin Edwards as librarian and guide, delve into an irresistible stack of tales perfect for every book lover and armchair sleuth, featuring much-loved Golden Age detectives....

The main aim of detective stories is to entertain, but the best cast a light on human behaviour and display both literary ambition and accomplishment....

Impossible crime stories have delighted people since the invention of detective fiction as puzzle-lovers sought more cerebral entertainment. Following on from Miraculous Mysteries, Martin Edwards brings together a whole new casebook of mystifying locked room mysteries and impossible crimes.

Winner of the 2016 EDGAR, AGATHA, MACAVITY and H.R.F.KEATING crime writing awards, this real-life detective story investigates how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction. Detective stories of the Twenties and Thirties have long been stereotyped as...

Death has come twice to Ravenbank, a remote community in England’s Lake District, each time on Halloween....

In the first major history of crime fiction in 50 years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and Their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the 18th century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction....

Daniel Kind's relationship with Miranda is on the rocks. After the bright lights of London, Miranda feels isolated in the Lake District and Daniel fears that she will just up and leave. And Miranda wouldn't be the first....

The stories in this collection will dredge up delight in crime fiction fans, as watery graves claim unsuspecting victims on the sands of an estuary and disembodied whispers penetrate the sleeping quarters of a ship's captain....

The streets of London have been home to many great detectives since the days of Sherlock Holmes and Watson, with some of the best authors in the genre taking to the short story form to pit their sleuths against crimes ranging from murders on the Tube to heists from the capital's finest jewellers.

London, 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist's show in front of thousands of people....

This new collection presents 17 classic stories, spanning a period from the 1880s to the 1970s, by a host of Scottish authors alongside writers....

Twenty years after her brother Callum mysteriously vanished, Orla Payne is still haunted by his disappearance....

The Lake District's cold case specialist, DCI Hannah Scarlett, is determined to uncover the truth behind Bethany Friend's apparent suicide in the Serpent Pool. Why would Bethany, so afraid of water, drown herself....

Yorkshire, 1606. A man vanishes from a locked gatehouse in a remote village. 300 years later, it happens again. Autumn 1930. Journalist Nell Fagan knows there's only one person who can get to the bottom of this mystery: Rachael Savernake....

In the peaceful Lake District village of Old Sawrey, a murderer strikes. Warren Howe, a husband and father of two, is brutally slaughtered with his own scythe by a mysterious hooded figure....

A cold case of poisonings heats up at a quaint guest house. A string of suspicious murders follows a crime writer’s tour bus. Two seedy stowaways uncover an infamous smuggling ring.

Basil Palmer has decided to murder a man called Louis Carson. There’s only one problem: he doesn’t know anything about his intended victim, not who he is or where he lives.