Murder in the Falling Snow: Ten Classic Crime Stories (Vintage Murders)

Product Information

Several of these stories have been published in various other anthologies and I had certainly read some of them before. Ten short stories from the golden age of British crime fiction, not all of which involve murder and precious few of which play out against a backdrop of snow, either falling or settled. The Mystery of Fellwyn Tunnel' by L T Meade and Robert Eustace - a railway signalman dies in mysterious and ghostly circumstances, but scientific investigator John Bell is not convinced . Sadly, a couple are more meandering, as told by one colourful character from the past to another equally colourful character from the past, without ever creating much sense of mystery or suspense. What you do get though is ten early to mid-twentieth century, male centric murder tales with a tenuous link to winter.

Austin Freeman - in which a woman is murdered and finding her killer may hinge on finding a cat, a dog and a monkey.

I really enjoyed Mr Pontings Alibi by the latter, twistingly clever, designed to fox the reader and just great fun to read! I had read the four longest entries before but was quite happy to read them all again ; the remaining six very short stories were fine.

Some have what I consider to be the prerequisite of a really good short story, namely a beginning, a middle and an end with a sting in the tail which, however mild, leaves me with pause for thought. Austin Freeman - not a name I knew - whose 'Mr Ponting's Alibi' was long enough, like the Doyle and the Chesteton, to develop a neatly attentuated investigation by lawyer Thorndyke whose relations with the local detective, Superintendent Miller are similar to Holmes and Lestrade.Innes was reliably clever, Sayers terse and entertaining with a well crafted red herring character, but I did rather enjoy R. Some of the other stories are less good and I didn't really like the Father Brown story that's included at all. Cecily Gayford studied English at the University of Oxford, where she wrote her thesis on the 'golden age' detective stories of the 1930s and 1940s. Every Christmas I treat myself to anthologies of murder mysteries from the Golden Age (sometimes beyond) and this proved to be a very solid and entertaining example of said type. By today's standards these stories are quaint but may be worth a read if you are interested in early detective fiction.

JANICE HALLETT, THE SUNDAY TIMESIt's only the afternoon, but dusk is already falling and a log fire burning in the grate. T. Meade and Robert Eustace, possibly the standout story here for me, but I remembered it fairly well from reading it somewhere else, possibly in one of the British Library collections. A pretty ragtag selection, all told, with only Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’ and Edgar Wallace’s sneakily structured ‘The Clapham Affair’ truly standing out.It begins with the description of the cushy and immoral life of an international gigolo and ends with justice being dealt out on a cold, snowy Christmas Eve in freezing London.