I find it best to review this book by the compilation itself, rather than each individual short story. Overall, I found there to be great variation in the short stories, primarily in terms of predictability and, in the simplest of terms, being entertaining. A handful of the authors I would choose to read more of, however most did not reach that level.

**I received this advance copy free from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.**

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

I didn't realize that this was a collection of stories rather than one mystery. That didn't stop me from enjoying them though. I particularly loved "Dear Mr. Editor..." I'm a mood reader with a short attention span, and these suspense stories fit the bill for me. Enjoyable!

This is the best collection of stories from the British Library Crime Classic so far. United by the common theme of books, the stories include authors, publishers, playwrights, and book collectors. Although virtually all of them are murder mysteries, the tales encompass so many styles that they are never boring.Some of the entries are by well-known mystery writers, others by authors that have been forgotten, but all are very good with lovely plot twists.

This is one of my favourites of the British Library Crime Classics collections, again excellently compiled and edited by Martin Edwards. Books and/or writing play a central role in all the stories, and all the authors seem to relish this aspect of the mysteries. I was pleased to find a story by Ngaio Marsh, "Chapter and Verse", as I don't think I have come across a short story by her before. Christianna Brand's story "Dear Mr. Editor..." was particularly haunting, while Edmund Crispin seemed to be exorcising some authorial demons in "We Know You're Busy Writing". Definitely recommended for all bibliophiles and mystery lovers!

I am a huge fan of Golden Age detective fiction and I am also a huge fan of bibliomysteries! This anthology of 16 short stories is therefore right up my alley. I loved this collection!

I really liked the format of this book. The introduction by Martin Edwards was informative and introduced me to some bibliomysteries I had never heard of. I also really liked the brief bio of the author before each short story.

My favourite story in the collection was " Dear Mr. Editor..." by Christianna Brand. Wow!

I will read anything published in the British Library Crime Classics collection and was so pleased to be given advance access to this latest publication.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

An excellent and tremendously engaging murder mystery collection. All of the sixteen stories were so entertaining to read. I recommend this book to anyone who has a penchant for murder mysteries. My personal favourite is We Know You’re Busy Writing... by Edmund Crispin. I also liked Philip MacDonald’s Malice Domestic.

I received a complimentary copy of this novel at my request from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley. This review is my own unbiased opinion.

The collection of short stories in this book were all very good. They were mainly puzzles
and you had to be imaginative in seeing what was beyond the actual happening and then piece
it together.

I couldn't do it but the way the stories unravelled were rivetting. A murder on a train was one
of the more easily solved crimes, but the story of a deceased leaving clues was very enjoyable.
A Savage Game was set in a country house (I always like those settings) and was cleverly done. A
Man and his Mother in Law was also clever where the murderer was caught because he thought he was
so clever. It was through a sale of a book that he got caught! Dear Mr. Editor - the writer was mad
and that set the tone of the story.

The collection was very relaxed reading. It was not edge of the seat suspense but it reflected a
slower pace of life and detection. It also described the conventions and stereotyping that happened
at the time which was fair

MURDER BY THE BOOK is another British Library Crime Classics anthology of short stories, curated by Martin Edwards.

As a mystery writer, editor, and expert in the genre (and current president of the Detection Club!) Edwards is a great choice to pull these stories together. Each story includes a brief preface written by Edwards.

There are so many Golden Age Mystery short stories out there, and it can be tricky to navigate them (trust me, I've tried!). This book makes it easy, gathering stories fitting the overarching theme of "bibliomysteries." Some fit the theme better than others, but I don't really mind that. I did DNF a few stories, but I expect that to happen with short story collections.

Overall, this is a fun collection. It'd make a great gift (or recommendation) to anyone who likes bookish themes and/or classic mysteries.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this eARC in exchange for a review.

This is one of the more enjoyable BLCC collections, even if the "bibliophiles" connections is occasionally perhaps a bit tenuous. Is an author as killer or victim really enough to make it a bibliophile mystery? But then, if you interpret the rules more narrowly, there are fewer mysteries left ;). And admittedly, most of the stories where books played a really major role were a bit absurd. Clever? Yes. Fun? Also yes. But simply also a bit silly and in large doses that can get a bit exhausting. So I felt quite grateful for a break with more conventional stories, even if it meant we were just watching an author plot a murder and it would have been a quite similar story if he'd been a carpenter.

I am also very happy, that the British Crime Library has started using content warnings. I'm of course aware that views on certain subjects have changed over time, but in some previous collections I would have been glad about some warning in advance that some yet-unchanged views play a major role in a story.

Curiosity drove me to Murder By the Book, Mysteries for Bibliophiles , one of the recent titles in the British Library Crime Classics series of detective stories from the Golden Age of crime.

More than 100 titles have been published since this series began in 2014, most of them by authors I’ve never heard of let alone read. My experience of Golden Age crime fiction has been pretty much limited to Agatha Christie with a dash of Marjorie Allingham, Josephine Tey and John Bude.

I had an idea that a short story anthology would be a good way to get to know more of the writers from this era. The Crime Classics series includes several themed collections but If I was going to choose one, then surely an anthology with a bookish theme would be the perfect starting point??

Murder By The Book is a collection of sixteen stories which feature authors, scriptwriters, ghost writers, book sellers and book collectors. They were written and published largely between the 1890s and the 1960s.

Of the sixteen authors represented there were only two I recognised as crime writers — Ngaio Marsh whose contribution Chapter And Verse includes an appearance by her famed fictional detective Superintendent Roderick Alleyn, and John Creasey whose story The Book of Honour is set in India. What surprised me most was to see a story included by one A.A Milne (yes, the same Milne who wrote the Winnie The Poo tales) and another by the poet Cecil Day Lewis.

This is where the short preface to each story, written by Martin Lewis, proved invaluable. He gives a potted bio of the author and places the story in the context of their body of work.

From these I learned that Milne wrote only one detective novel (The Red House Mystery) but it became such a best seller he was elected to membership of the Detective Club.

Cecil Day Lewis was far more prolific. He turned to crime fiction to supplement his income, writing under the pseudonym of Nicholas Blake,. According to Edwards, “in a twist of fate that the author would not have foreseen … he seems to be more highly regarded for his crime fiction than his verse.” I’m not entirely convinced about that statement despite Martin Edwards’ undoubted wealth of knowledge about the Golden Age of Crime. Cecil Day Lewis the poet I’ve certainly heard about but never Nicholas Blake the crime writer.

A Book Worth Reading?
it’s fair to say I found the stories in Murder By The Book to be of variable quality. Some, like the first story A Lesson in Crime by G.D.H and M. Cole, were so short they came to an end almost before they started, their brevity giving little scope for character development or scene setting. The John Creasey tale was a particular disappointment because though it built up a good portrait of a father and son relationship. I expected more of a mystery.

The three most interesting tales all involve marriages that are not as perfect or blissful as they might appear to outsiders.

Trent and the Ministering Angel by E.C. Bentley concerns the death of Gregory Landell, a wealthy scholarly man who’d married late in life. His lifelong friend had harboured suspicions for some time about Landell’s wife. She never showed George any affection and was always in earshot every time his friend visited. On his death she inherits the whole estate but something doesn’t seem quite right so Landell’s lawyer asks amateur detective Phillip Trent to take a look. The the dialogue is delightfully vicious and the solution has an ingenious connection to Lewis Caroll.

The marriage in Malice Domestic by Philip Macdonald looks to be a happy, successful relationship. But when the writer Carl Boden begins suffering terrible stomach pains and severe bouts of sickness after eating, suspicion falls on his wife. For Carl is only sick when he eats at home. This story, one of the few in the collection set outside England builds slowly but ends with a delightful and unexpected twist.

My favourite is one of the last in the book: A Question of Character, by Victor Canning features a husband and wife who are both mystery writers. When the wife’s fame eclipses that of her husband, jealousy and resentment ensure. Geoffrey Gilroy has had enough of playing second fiddle to his wife and would much rather be with his mistress. Canning takes readers inside the mind of a potential murderer as he plots to bump off his wife, the tension mounting as we wait to discover if Gilroy succeeds.

These three tales alone made Murder By The Book worth reading. It delivered exactly what I wanted — a taster of Golden Age crime writing that’s given me some names of authors I’ll want to explore further.

Murder By The Book, Mysteries for Bibliophiles, edited by Martin Edwards: Footnotes
Murder By the Book was published by British Library Publishing in August 2021. All titles in the Crime Classics series can be found here. My thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for providing a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.

Here is a list of the authors/stories included in the collection:

A Lesson in Crime by G.D.H and M. Cole

Trent and the Ministering Angel by E.C. Bentley

A Slice of Bad Luck by Nicholas Blake

The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts by S.C. Roberts

Malice Domestic by Phillip MacDonald

A Savage Game by A.A. Milne

The Clue in the Book by Julian Symons

The Manuscript by Gladys Mitchell

A Man and his Mother-in-Law by Roy Vickers

Grey’s Ghost by Michael Innes

Dear Mr. Editor… by Christianna Brand–

Murder in Advance by Marjorie Bremner

A Question of Character by Victor Canning

The Book of Honour by John Creasey

We Know You’re Busy Writing… by Edmund Crispin

Chapter and Verse by Ngaio Marsh

This is an excellent gift for any book lover, but especially the classic mystery lover in your life. It was a real treat to read the author biographies before each story and see what a rich history of mystery writers these were chosen from. All were bibliomysteries, with either the action taking place in a library or bookstore, or the main characters were authors. The range of publication dates was from 1890s to 1960s, so it was nice, quaint, bedtime reading. You may find a very important will hidden inside a book, or a victim may have used a book to name their killer before dying. It's a nice variety of stories.

Anthologies for me are usually like boxed chocolates - there are some I love, some I like, and then some that are going in the trash uneaten. With British Library Crime Classics anthologies, though, I generally devour all the stories greedily.

I'd read a few of the stories before, such as the Innes, Brand, and Crispin ones, but there was a Trent story by Bentley that I hadn't encountered, and enjoyed. The star of the collection for me, though, was the John Creasey story, "The Book of Honour." That story alone would have earned this four stars from me, even if the other stories were absolute dreck, which they were not.

Each of these stories has something to do with books. Books are sold, books are written, and books are stolen. Most of the stories are written by authors with whom the reader will be familiar, but there are a few, like the ones by the Coles and Bremmer, that are unexpected delights.

Recommended for those who love books and those who write them, and those who love a good Golden Age mystery.

I received an advance copy from Poisoned Pen Press via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

4/5 stars

The British Library has released another fabulous anthology as part of their Crime Classic collection. Murder by the Book contains sixteen short stories from a variety of mystery writers. Originally written from 1933 to 1973, the stories are each connected in some way to the world of books. The collection contains stories from some of my favorite Golden Age writers, including Edmund Crispin, Christianna Brand, and Nicholas Blake. I was also very pleased to be introduced to a number of authors I’ve never heard of such as S. C. Roberts and Marjorie Bremner.

Several of the stories really tickled my fancy. GDH and M. Cole give A Lesson in Crime to a best selling crime novelist who really needs to be more conscientious regarding the quality of his writing. Christianna Brand writes “a nice creepy sort of story full of colour and horror and all the rest” as requested by her Dear Editor. And Edmund Crispin weaves a tale wherein a weary author find a solution regarding all of those interruptions from friends and acquaintances who are always We Know You’re Busy Writing, But…

Martin’s introduction provides a short history of “bibliomysteries“, and is, as always, spectacular. And in his brief introductions to the individual stories he provides the perfect background and context for each. I my opinion not all of the stories are winners, and in at least one, the connection to books is tenuous at best. But on the whole, I’d have to say that this really a very enjoyable read, and a great addition to the collection.

Murder by the Book is a collection of "golden age" mystery stories connected in one way or another to the world of books—which makes it pretty much perfect as far as I'm concerned. Sometimes an author is the "detective"; sometimes a book offers the answer to a mystery; sometimes the mystery itself is a missing book. Editor Martin Edwards has provided an excellent selection of stories and offers a brief, engaging introduction to each, contextualizing it in the chronology of mystery writing in general and bibliophile mysteries in particular. I raced through this book, and enjoyed every piece in it, which generally isn't the case with anthologies like these that tend of offer a win-some, lose-some reading experience.

The mysteries here are engaging, and offer reasonably complex puzzles, given that each is just a story and nothing larger. Because these titles are from the past (mostly in the last 100 years), they have their anachronisms, which Edwards acknowledges in his introduction to the collection. What struck me, though, about this introduction is that while Edwards is pretty articulate in acknowledging racial/ethnic stereotyping, he doesn't give similar attention to gender stereotyping, which is even more present in the stories. Frankly, I expect stories in collections like this to reflect the biases of their time, but I find it interesting that here one kind of bias seems to require a greater apology than another. This really isn't a criticism of the book or of Edwards, it's just an observation about the times we live in and what different folks feel obliged to acknowledged.

If you're looking for an entertaining read that you can devour in small bites, you'll enjoy Murder by the book.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher; the opinions are my own.

I love the British Library Crime Classics series of books, and as a reader I was looking ahead to this edition. It´s always good to read short stories, but there´s also the chance that some in the collection are not as good as others. Here though I liked most of them, starting with the story A Lesson in Crime by the author couple Cole. One or two weren´t easy to understand and some also too creepy for my taste. On the whole another very good addition to the series.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Murder and books. A winning combination for over a century and a half. What's even better? A story about murder and books (bookstore, library, the writing of, industry, etc). I just love myself a bibliomystery. So, of course, the British Library Crime Classic Series' latest addition that is an anthology of bibliomysteries is right up my alley.

This series always delivers and it has another great read with this one (pun intended). As with any anthology, some are better than others but it is a good selection from well-known mystery writers and some other less familiar ones. So pick this book up and indulge in mystery, murder and books!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I must not have read the description closely enough because it didn’t occur to me this would be a collection of stories rather than one long book. I don’t do well with them but I found these to be interesting in the way they were all connected somewhat. I prefer cozies so some of these were darker than I would have liked but they were all entertaining. I am just not the right reader for this collection but I recommend it to anyone who likes vintage British mysteries.

Some genius in the United Kingdom, whom I don/t know, thought of bringing back mystery and detective writers from the earlier parts of the twentieth century.and putting them under the aegis of the British Library Crime Classics. This has been a stroke of great luck for contemporary readers, some of whom may never have heard of these luminaries, and others of whom will enjoy reading those writers whom they had earlier encountered.

Some of the Crime Classics' books are novels, but a fair number of them are short story anthologies. I have enjoyed many of the novels, but I think I like the short story collections even better. This anthology is particularly fun .Usually I mention the stories I liked best, but I enjoyed them all and can't choose favorites. Martin Edwards, the editor, does an excellent job of introducing each story, Highly recommended.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

I love golden age era mysteries and I love books so this is perfect. A brilliant short story collection for any book worm who wants something nice and light to read - I enjoyed this a lot and plan to revisit!

1. A Lesson in Crime by G.D.H. Cole and M. Cole (1953
Crime writer Joseph Newton is killed while travelling on the Cornish Riviera express. Who and why was this simple murder committed.
2. Trent and the Ministering Angel by E.C. Bentley (1938)
A client of solicitor Arthur Selby has died. But he states his suspicions about the will to Philip Trent.
3. A Slice of Bad Luck by Nicolas Blake (1939)
A group of people called the Assassins - Crime writers, judges, etc attend a dinner party when one of them is murdered.
4. The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts by S.C. Roberts (1945)
Who is stealing the books from the Club and why.
5. Malice Domestic by Philip MacDonald (1946)
Is someone trying to kill Crime writer Carl Borden.
6. A Savage Game by A.A. Milne (1950)
Chief Constable Saxe gives writer Mr Colby details about the latest murder to see if he can solve the case.
7. The Clue in the Book by Julian Symons (1952)
Who dies kill invalid Silas Brinn. This was just too obvious.
8. The Manuscript by Gladys Mitchell (1953)
Why was a manuscript burnt and a female convict killed. Not that interesting.
9. A Man and his Mother-in-law by Roy Vickers (1953)
How did Arthur Penfold end up as a murderer
10. Grey's Ghost by Michael Innes (1956)
A conversation overheard - Grey's ghost was black - is finally explained
11. Dear Mr. Editor by Christianna Brand (1958)
In response to a request for a story the author sends a document to an editor - Detailing attempts at killing Helen
12. Murder in Advance by Marjorie Bremner (1958)
Why was likeable playwright Lewis Maynard murdered wonders Inspector Dacre to his friend Dr Allerton
13. A Question of Character by Victor canning (1960)
Geoffrey Gilroy has decided to murder his wife, a more successful and famous novalist.
14. The Book of Honour by John Creasy (1965)
Why does Barurao's son hate him.
15. We Know You're Busy Writing.... by Edmund Crispin (1969)
What is a stay at home writer to do when he keeps getting interrupted while writing.
16. Chapter and Verse by Ngaio Marsh (1973).
Book man Timothy Bates has a mystery for Superintendent Alleyn concerning entries in an old bible he has discovered.

A collection of short stories all with a connection to books, for example crime writers.
There were only a couple of stories that I was not impressed with as far as they were not that entertaining. But overall the collection is an enjoyable set of mystery short stories, well-written and in the confines of shortness, well-plotted, with its collection of interesting and somewhat likeable characters.
An ARC was provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.