Another delightful collection of short stories from the Golden Age of British mysteries, this time all of them taking place in Continental Europe. The collection is full of real winners too, with one exception. The stories are collected from many sources and range from the late 19th-Century to the 1950"s.

The single story that isn't worth your while is early in the book. It was written by a military man under a pen name and takes place during World War I. The writing a so dreadful, I couldn't read it. The kind of painful mistakes you would expect from badly-educated ten-year-olds. Take my advice, skip it and go on to the other delightful mysteries.

Besides the insights into many new authors I find in these collections, I love the wide variety of crimes. Sometimes it seems that every mystery is only concerned with murder but here you find a wide variety of crimes, committed in interesting ways.

I always promise myself when I get a new one of these story collections that I will go slowly. It never works because I enjoy them so much!

As editor Martin Edward explains in his introduction to this anthology, there is a prevalent but mistaken impression that British crime fiction of the "Golden Age" is invariably set in the familiar landscapes of home. It is a view which is reinforced by TV and movie adaptations of "cozy mysteries". If what they portray were anything near to reality, the mind-boggling levels of violent criminality in sleepy, pastoral English hamlets would be enough to make any sociologist or criminologist go wild.

This enjoyable collection sets the record straight by presenting the reader with a generous selection of stories set on the Continent. The reasons for the protagonists finding themselves away from the British Isles are varied - holidaying, work, war, or the necessities of the investigation itself. The nature of the crimes equally diverse, ranging from murder most foul (through poisoning and beheading , just to mention a couple of morbid examples) to theft and espionage. It makes for a deliciously assorted bag.

What I particularly liked, howeve,r is the well-judged balance between familiar crime writers and characters (Agatha Christie's Parker Pyne, Chesterton's Father Brown, to give an example) and lesser-known (at least to me) authors and characters such as Marie Belloc Lowndes and her Hercules Popeau (the unwitting prototype of Christie's Poirot). Arthur Conan Doyle, who obviously needs no introduction is, interestingly, represented by a story which is generally classified amongst his "dark" or "weird" tales - The New Catacomb. It features no investigator and its setting is deliciously Gothic. As a fan of the latter genre, I also enjoyed the spooky melodrama of J. Jefferson Farjeon's "The Room in the Tower" as well as H.C. Bailey's "The Long Dinner". Bailey's investigator - Reggie Fortune - is rather irritating, but the windswept Breton landscape and the echoes of "folk horror" still made this a worthwhile read.

This anthology is, quite cannily, set for publication in August. It is indeed the perfect holiday read for mystery lovers, a book to carry on a trip abroad or to use as accompaniment to some armchair travelling - to the Continent, of course.

Princess Fuzzypants here:
I do enjoy anthologies. Some I really enjoy and others I just enjoy. This one I just enjoyed. It did have its share of really good short stories but the theme did not click with me as much as the "locked room" mysteries. It could be it is just me. There were good authors of classic whodunits and some were jolly good.
Still the beauty of anthologies is it is like a literary smorgasbord. You can taste and sample to your heart's content and fill up your plate with the dishes of your choosing. I always think these kinds of books are great for a break between longer tomes. I like the quick in and quick out.
If you also like that genre, give this a look. I give it four purrs and two paws up.

This is a collection of short stories written near the beginning of the twentieth century. Many of the authors were new to me and it was exciting to find them. The stories are written in styles which are precise and detailed.
One of the things which became evident to me, human nature has not changed in the last 100 years. There were villains, there were people who are talented puzzle solvers and there were victims. The authors have created characters who were generally well developed and people who may not always be nice but they were always interesting.
It is evident that Martin Edwards lovingly presented each of these stories for the reader's enjoyment. He has done an excellent job of introducing authors from another era.
I am a fan of Chesterton's Father Brown, and for me that was the one I enjoyed the most. But nearly every story was interesting and entertaining. If you are a fan of classic mysteries, this is a book you will enjoy.
I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley. I am voluntarily writing this review and all opinions are my own.

This collection of vintage short stories spans the late 1800's through the first quarter (or so) of the 20th Century. It would be a great text for someone charting the history of crime fiction--it offers a glimpse of the style and tone of the short fiction by some of the early masters of the genre.

The writing is quite mannered and by the time the anthology reaches the work of Agatha Christie she seems screamingly modern and unaffected---no doubt amusing for anyone who finds her work "old-fashioned."

Net galley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This British Library Crime Classic anthology, as the title explains, is a collection of 14 short stories where the crimes take place on the continent, rather than in England. Most have English characters and English detectives. Sherlock Holmes does not appear in the Doyle story The New Catacomb which might be fortunate for the great detective since Doyle seems to have borrowed generously from a classic Poe story. Chesterton’s Father Brown finds himself dealing with too many heads for one trunk. Although Arnold Bennet, author of the Staffordshire novel Anne of the Five Towns, did not concentrate on detective fiction he did write a neat little heist story about a missing necklace. My favorite was a Parker Pyne story, a character not as popular as the author’s Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. Christie offers a mystery about a jewel theft with some surprising advice to a young husband about his marriage. And even F. Tennyson Jess, the author of the great A Pin to See the Peepshow, has a dark tale about a husband who may or may not be hastening his wife’s death.

These stories range from good to forgettable, a typical mixture for an anthology. It is an unchallenging fun read.

I received an e-ARC of this collection of short mystery stories through NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press. This book is part of the British Library Crime Classics series. Thank you for the opportunity to read this collection.

3.5 stars

One of the interesting aspects of this collection of short stories featuring crime scenes taking place in locations other than “standard” British areas was how many of the authors I was not familiar with. If you enjoy trying out the writings of new authors, these short stories might give you new avenues of exploration. I enjoyed most of the stories so would give the collection a 3.5 star rating; it was too good for just three neutral stars, but not quite enough to round up to four so I was stuck in star rating limbo-land.

There are fourteen stories. Here they are listed in the order in which they appear in the book with title and author plus any additional information I found most interesting to me.

The New Catacomb by Arthur Conan Doyle – written during the time when Holmes had “died” so this does not feature the famous pair

A Bracelet at Bruges by Arnold Bennett

The Secret Garden by G. K. Chesterton – a Father Brown "impossible" story

The Secret of the Magnifique by E. Phillip Oppenheim

Petit-Jean by Ian Hay

The Lover of St. Lys by F. Tennyson Jesse – first appeared in a magazine in 1919

Popeau Intervenes by Marie Belloc Lowndes – created her Belgian ex-policeman, ex-spy Hercules Popeau before Agatha Christie began writing about her own extremely similar character. Quite interesting don’t you think?

The Perfect Murder by Stacy Aumonier – a favorite author for me, Christopher Fowler, states Aumonier’s stories should be considered classics. Story first appeared in The Strand magazine in 1926.

The Room in the Tower by J. Jefferson Farjeon

The Ten-Franc Counter by H. de Vere Stacpoole – first appeared in a magazine in 1926

Have You Got Everything You Want? By Agatha Christie – main character is Parker Pyne with the initial appearance in 1933

The Long Dinner by H. C. Bailey – a Reggie Fortune story in a collection from 1935

The Packet-Boat Murder by Josephine Bell

Villa Almirante by Michael Gilbert

There is definitely something here for most readers who have a decided fondness for the Classic Age of mystery novels. Once again Martin Edwards has put together a themed collection, this time to delight lovers of both short stories and continental European locations as well.

Sorry, I didn't realize this is a book of short stories.

This is another wonderful collection of short stories edited by Martin Edwards. It’s a well compiled and very broad variety of mysteries. Some rely on their setting for a solution, and others are just your ordinary mystery set in another country. It was very enjoyable.
On the stories themselves…
The New Catacomb, The Secret Garden, The Ten Frank Counter, Petit-Jean & The Long Dinner rely the most on their foreign setting. They just wouldn’t work anywhere else.
A Bracelet at Burges is a wonderfully light mystery by an author new to me.
The Room in the Tower,(spoiler) this one was all setting and atmosphere. But it’s no mystery. It’s a rather ordinary ghost story. Farjeon tried to build it into a mystery but only succeeded in making it spooky. It’s the only one that didn’t fit with the rest of the collection.
Popeau Intervenes by Marie Belloc Lowndes and Have You Got Everything You Want? by Agatha Christie were my least favorite. I could actually say I didn’t like them. The first I disliked because it focused on the affair more than on the solution of the crime. For the second, I’ve never thought the Parker Pyne stories were very clever, and since the solution always includes lying to a spouse I dislike them even more.
I was a little apprehensive about this collection because some of them are more modern than what I usually read. I thought there might be more curse words than in the other collections, but I was pleasantly surprised at how clean it is.
I received this as a free ARC from NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press. It was my pleasure to write a review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for my advance copy.
The format for these anthologies is now well-established.There is an Introduction by Martin Edwards, in this instance giving a potted history of classic British crime writing set on the European continent from 1886 to 1970. The stories chosen are a mix of the readily-available and the obscure, by writers familiar and less-known, varied in length, style and quality.Each piece is prefaced by brief biographical and bibliographic information.
This volume contains 14 stories, the earliest from 1896, the most recent published in 1959.The crimes are mostly murder or theft. The majority take place in France.
I had previously read 5, those by Conan Doyle, Bennett, Chesterton, Ian Hay and Christie, all of which are good quality, although the Conan Doyle is very transparent.
Of the others, I thought the Oppenheim and H C Bailey were over-long, the Tennyson Jesse and Belloc Lowndes both interesting, but slight and dated.
Stacy Aumonier’s 1926 tale “The Perfect Murder” is a real gem. Aumonier is widely admired and it is easy to see why on the evidence of this well-crafted tale. I shall seek out more.
Farjeon’s contribution is not, I would suggest, principally a crime story and was a bit “theatrical”. H de Vere Stacpoole is not a writer I am familiar with and I was not too impressed with the story here which was a bit dull.New to me also was Josephine Bell represented here by a very short example of her writing .The story was not of the best. Finally, Michael Gilbert’s “The Villa Almirante” set in Italy and a good tale from a prolific writer.
For me, the outstanding stories are Ian Hay’s “Petit Jean” and Stacy Aumonier’s “The Perfect Murder”.
Overall this is a reasonably good collection with sufficient “winners” to make it recommendable.

I am a big fan for the writers of the "Golden Age, " and it is really great to discover ones I did not know about through these anthologies presented by Martin Edwards. Edwards really knows his stuff and presents us with a short bio of each author as an introduction to the short story, which really gives an real insight in the perspective of the style of the author.
Some I like and will search out more writing, others not so much. All in all, this book gives a chance to discover some writer from this period with little work from me, but with much anticipation of finding a new favourite author