Collecting Crime

This section of the website is devoted to the fascination of collecting crime fiction, and materials associated with it.

For fans of Golden Age mysteries, I can thoroughly recommend two books by John Cooper and B.A. Pike: Detective Fiction: the Collector’s Guide and the wonderfully illustrated Artists in Crime. But crime fiction collectibles are not confined to first editions of classic mysteries – and, given the price of some of them, that’s just as well...

Here’s a selection of highlights I’ve come across over the years.

The Rasp
This was the book that introduced Philip Macdonald’s regular detective, Anthony Gethryn, and served to establish his reputation as a writer of ingenious mysteries. Macdonald was born in 1900, and yet this book, published in 1924, when he was only 23, was not his first – he had previously co-authored two novels with his father, Ronald Macdonald. This particular edition was inscribed by Macdonald on 23 October in the year of publication – the dust jacket, alas, is a facsimile.
More...

Double Blackmail
The blurb of the American edition of the Golden Age mystery Double Blackmail, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, is rather enticing: ‘”Double Blackmail” only in part describes the double-ness of this detective mystery. There are, of course, two cases of blackmail. But there are likewise two murders; two bigamies; two detectives; the two Coles for authors; and twins….’
More...

The Floating Admiral
I was prompted by my election to the Detection Club to seek out their publications – details of which I am compiling for the Detection Club page on this site. The Floating Admiral is a famous ‘round-robin’ novel by various hands, and because of its scarcity, a first edition in wrapper would normally be out of reach for me. But not long after I learned of my election, I won the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger for ‘The Bookbinder’s Apprentice’ and by a happy chance, the prize money was equal to the cost of this copy of the book.
More...

Many A Slip
Detective fiction writers like to play games with their readers, and authors of all kinds are apt to fret, once their books have been published, that they have not done enough work on their stories, and that a little more revision would have worked wonders. This first edition of Many a Slip by Freeman Wills Crofts is a rather pleasing example of both.
More...

Hannibal Rising
Do book-signings and launch parties really help to raise an author’s public profile? Opinions vary. Many publishers, for instance, are sceptical as to the value of signing sessions. Often they work best if set up in a manner distinctive enough to capture the imagination of potential readers – and, ideally, the media. One of the most striking examples in the crime fiction field over the past few years was the bizarre celebration of the UK publication of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising on 5 December 2006. Harris is almost as famous for being shy of personal publicity as he is for creating legendary serial killer Hannibal Lecter. But when Heinemann launched the book at Waterstone’s in Oxford Street, London, they made the most of the occasion. In fact, they made a meal of it….
More...

The Mousetrap
Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap was first presented, by Peter Saunders, at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952, with a cast which included the young Richard Attenborough. Today, it is a legendary tourist attraction, the longest continuously running play in theatrical history, the world over.
More...

The Man in the Brown Suit
The Man in the Brown Suit was Agatha Christie’s fourth published novel, a light thriller first appearing in 1924. As a crime writer, she was at that time still finding her feet, but the book nevertheless remains an enjoyable read to this day. It is also interesting to note that the key twist in the book anticipates the much more famous trick solution to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in 1926.
More...

The Chill and the Kill
How many people today remember Joan Fleming (1908-1980) or her work? Not many; she didn’t even rate a single mention in the massive and eclectic Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. This neglect is sobering, for she won not one but two CWA Gold Daggers, for the very enjoyable When I Grow Rich in 1962, and for Young Man, I Think You’re Dying, in 1970; the latter beat the much more critically acclaimed Anthony Price into second place.
More...

The Sad Variety
Nicholas Blake was the name under which the poet (and eventual Poet Laureate) Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972) wrote detective novels. He enjoyed much success in his day, creating a notable amateur sleuth in Nigel Strangeways, who was in part based on W.H. Auden and who appears in perhaps the best Blake book, The Beast Must Die, which was filmed by Chabrol. Blake’s debut, A Question of Proof, appeared in 1935 and made an immediate impact.
More...

The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Ellery Queen For every Sherlock Holmes story written by Arthur Conan Doyle, there have been innumerable pastiches of his (or Doctor Watson’s?) style. I confess to having been responsible for several myself. As a Holmes fan since my schooldays, I have always admired the great consulting detective, as well as Conan Doyle’s sharp, atmospheric writing.
More...

Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery – long galley proofs corrected by Christie and her agent
Gordon Ramsey, an American academic, was assisted by his friendship with Phelps Pratt, president of Agatha Christie’s American publishers, Dodd, Mead, in persuading the notoriously reclusive author to co-operate with this, the first full-length evaluation of her work, published in the US in 1967. Janet Morgan’s 1984 life of Christie records that Ramsey had to agree to various constraints on his work: the book contained little biographical material and respected her wish that he should not mention the then unpublished final novels featuring Poirot and Miss Marple, although they had been written many years earlier.
More...

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly
Some crime novelists whose early work is not accompanied by a great fanfare nevertheless seem destined for success, so conspicuous are their story-telling skills. Of course, sometimes, for whatever reason, fame and fortune eludes them forever. In other cases – Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, Andrew Taylor and Ann Cleeves spring to mind – they write for many years, well and truly paying their dues, before they hit the jackpot. With Michael Connelly, it seemed almost certain to me from the outset that he would make it big – and he certainly has. Yet this, his first Harry Bosch novel, attracted little attention when Headline first published it in 1992, and the print run was tiny.
More...

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin – first edition
I first met Ian Rankin in 1995, at the Nottingham Bouchercon, but by that time I had read and enjoyed several of his novels. In those days, he was living in France and his work was relatively little known. I remember picking up a first edition of his debut short story collection, A Good Hanging, in a gathering of remaindered hardbacks. A couple of quid then, perhaps one hundred now – if you can lay your hands on a copy. When I was asked to take over the editorship of the Crime Writers Association’s annual anthology, Ian was one of the first potential contributors I approached. He promptly obliged with the excellent ‘Herbert in Motion’ – written in a single day and I still recall with appreciation the enthusiastic encouragement he gave me after reading my fourth Harry Devlin novel, Yesterday’s Papers.
More...

Trent’s Own Case by E.C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen
Trent’s Last Case, by E.C. Bentley, has long been recognised as a landmark in the genre. Although Bentley, a successful journalist, intended his story as a light-hearted debunking of detective fiction, the cleverly plotted book enjoyed startling success on its first appearance before the First World War began, and has stood the test of time. Previously, the best work in the genre had been in the short story, with Sherlock Holmes to the fore. Once the war was over, the scene was set for the emergence of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and the other novelists of ‘the Golden Age’.
More...

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine – the first issue
From the start of my crime writing career, I have been lucky enough to be associated with Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the longest running specialist crime fiction magazine of all time. The very first crime story that I had accepted for publication was a short story called ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ It won first prize in a competition judged by the senior fiction editor of Bella Magazine, who agreed to publish it. By a lucky chance, the crime writer Robert Barnard was present at the award ceremony and he recommended the story to Eleanor Sullivan, the then editor of EQMM. So the story appeared on both sides of the Atlantic a few months before publication of my debut novel, ‘All the Lonely People’. After Eleanor’s death, her successor Janet Hutchings, who has always been a huge supporter of British crime fiction, offered me much encouragement. On my first visit to the US, one of the highlights was a visit to Janet at EQMM’s offices in New York and over the years, many of my short stories have first seen the light in the pages of the magazine.
More...

Harry Stephen Keeler – signed letter card
If there were an award for Most Eccentric Crime Writer, Chicago’s Harry Stephen Keeler would be the man to beat. When he was a child, it seems, Keeler was committed to a lunatic asylum by his mother, and this does not surprise those who have pored over his weird and wandering tales. My late father was, in his youth, a Keeler fan and urged me to read the great man’s work, but when, as a schoolboy in the 1960s, I tried to track down Keeler novels, they proved elusive. Keeler (1890-1967) faded from the scene long before his death, dropped by his publishers on both sides of the Atlantic yet continuing to write endless stories that have never seen the light of day.
More...

The Rasp This was the book that introduced Philip Macdonald’s regular detective, Anthony Gethryn, and served to establish his reputation as a writer of ingenious mysteries. Macdonald was born in 1900, and yet this book, published in 1924, when he was only 23, was not his first – he had previously co-authored two novels with his father, Ronald Macdonald. This particular edition was inscribed by Macdonald on 23 October in the year of publication – the dust jacket, alas, is a facsimile. More...
	Double Blackmail The blurb of the American edition of the Golden Age mystery Double Blackmail, by G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, is rather enticing: ‘”Double Blackmail” only in part describes the double-ness of this detective mystery. There are, of course, two cases of blackmail. But there are likewise two murders; two bigamies; two detectives; the two Coles for authors; and twins….’ More...
The Floating Admiral I was prompted by my election to the Detection Club to seek out their publications – details of which I am compiling for the Detection Club page on this site. The Floating Admiral is a famous ‘round-robin’ novel by various hands, and because of its scarcity, a first edition in wrapper would normally be out of reach for me. But not long after I learned of my election, I won the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger for ‘The Bookbinder’s Apprentice’ and by a happy chance, the prize money was equal to the cost of this copy of the book. More...
	Many A Slip Detective fiction writers like to play games with their readers, and authors of all kinds are apt to fret, once their books have been published, that they have not done enough work on their stories, and that a little more revision would have worked wonders. This first edition of Many a Slip by Freeman Wills Crofts is a rather pleasing example of both. More...
Hannibal Rising Do book-signings and launch parties really help to raise an author’s public profile? Opinions vary. Many publishers, for instance, are sceptical as to the value of signing sessions. Often they work best if set up in a manner distinctive enough to capture the imagination of potential readers – and, ideally, the media. One of the most striking examples in the crime fiction field over the past few years was the bizarre celebration of the UK publication of Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising on 5 December 2006. Harris is almost as famous for being shy of personal publicity as he is for creating legendary serial killer Hannibal Lecter. But when Heinemann launched the book at Waterstone’s in Oxford Street, London, they made the most of the occasion. In fact, they made a meal of it…. More...
	The Mousetrap Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap was first presented, by Peter Saunders, at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on 25 November 1952, with a cast which included the young Richard Attenborough. Today, it is a legendary tourist attraction, the longest continuously running play in theatrical history, the world over. More...
The Man in the Brown Suit The Man in the Brown Suit was Agatha Christie’s fourth published novel, a light thriller first appearing in 1924. As a crime writer, she was at that time still finding her feet, but the book nevertheless remains an enjoyable read to this day. It is also interesting to note that the key twist in the book anticipates the much more famous trick solution to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, published in 1926. More...
	The Chill and the Kill How many people today remember Joan Fleming (1908-1980) or her work? Not many; she didn’t even rate a single mention in the massive and eclectic Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing. This neglect is sobering, for she won not one but two CWA Gold Daggers, for the very enjoyable When I Grow Rich in 1962, and for Young Man, I Think You’re Dying, in 1970; the latter beat the much more critically acclaimed Anthony Price into second place. More...
The Sad Variety Nicholas Blake was the name under which the poet (and eventual Poet Laureate) Cecil Day Lewis (1904-1972) wrote detective novels. He enjoyed much success in his day, creating a notable amateur sleuth in Nigel Strangeways, who was in part based on W.H. Auden and who appears in perhaps the best Blake book, The Beast Must Die, which was filmed by Chabrol. Blake’s debut, A Question of Proof, appeared in 1935 and made an immediate impact. More...
	The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes edited by Ellery Queen For every Sherlock Holmes story written by Arthur Conan Doyle, there have been innumerable pastiches of his (or Doctor Watson’s?) style. I confess to having been responsible for several myself. As a Holmes fan since my schooldays, I have always admired the great consulting detective, as well as Conan Doyle’s sharp, atmospheric writing. More...
Agatha Christie: Mistress of Mystery – long galley proofs corrected by Christie and her agent Gordon Ramsey, an American academic, was assisted by his friendship with Phelps Pratt, president of Agatha Christie’s American publishers, Dodd, Mead, in persuading the notoriously reclusive author to co-operate with this, the first full-length evaluation of her work, published in the US in 1967. Janet Morgan’s 1984 life of Christie records that Ramsey had to agree to various constraints on his work: the book contained little biographical material and respected her wish that he should not mention the then unpublished final novels featuring Poirot and Miss Marple, although they had been written many years earlier. More...
	The Black Echo by Michael Connelly Some crime novelists whose early work is not accompanied by a great fanfare nevertheless seem destined for success, so conspicuous are their story-telling skills. Of course, sometimes, for whatever reason, fame and fortune eludes them forever. In other cases – Ian Rankin, Peter Robinson, Andrew Taylor and Ann Cleeves spring to mind – they write for many years, well and truly paying their dues, before they hit the jackpot. With Michael Connelly, it seemed almost certain to me from the outset that he would make it big – and he certainly has. Yet this, his first Harry Bosch novel, attracted little attention when Headline first published it in 1992, and the print run was tiny. More...
Black and Blue by Ian Rankin – first edition I first met Ian Rankin in 1995, at the Nottingham Bouchercon, but by that time I had read and enjoyed several of his novels. In those days, he was living in France and his work was relatively little known. I remember picking up a first edition of his debut short story collection, A Good Hanging, in a gathering of remaindered hardbacks. A couple of quid then, perhaps one hundred now – if you can lay your hands on a copy. When I was asked to take over the editorship of the Crime Writers Association’s annual anthology, Ian was one of the first potential contributors I approached. He promptly obliged with the excellent ‘Herbert in Motion’ – written in a single day and I still recall with appreciation the enthusiastic encouragement he gave me after reading my fourth Harry Devlin novel, Yesterday’s Papers. More...
	Trent’s Own Case by E.C. Bentley and H. Warner Allen Trent’s Last Case, by E.C. Bentley, has long been recognised as a landmark in the genre. Although Bentley, a successful journalist, intended his story as a light-hearted debunking of detective fiction, the cleverly plotted book enjoyed startling success on its first appearance before the First World War began, and has stood the test of time. Previously, the best work in the genre had been in the short story, with Sherlock Holmes to the fore. Once the war was over, the scene was set for the emergence of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and the other novelists of ‘the Golden Age’. More...
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine – the first issue From the start of my crime writing career, I have been lucky enough to be associated with Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, the longest running specialist crime fiction magazine of all time. The very first crime story that I had accepted for publication was a short story called ‘Are You Sitting Comfortably?’ It won first prize in a competition judged by the senior fiction editor of Bella Magazine, who agreed to publish it. By a lucky chance, the crime writer Robert Barnard was present at the award ceremony and he recommended the story to Eleanor Sullivan, the then editor of EQMM. So the story appeared on both sides of the Atlantic a few months before publication of my debut novel, ‘All the Lonely People’. After Eleanor’s death, her successor Janet Hutchings, who has always been a huge supporter of British crime fiction, offered me much encouragement. On my first visit to the US, one of the highlights was a visit to Janet at EQMM’s offices in New York and over the years, many of my short stories have first seen the light in the pages of the magazine. More...
	Harry Stephen Keeler – signed letter card If there were an award for Most Eccentric Crime Writer, Chicago’s Harry Stephen Keeler would be the man to beat. When he was a child, it seems, Keeler was committed to a lunatic asylum by his mother, and this does not surprise those who have pored over his weird and wandering tales. My late father was, in his youth, a Keeler fan and urged me to read the great man’s work, but when, as a schoolboy in the 1960s, I tried to track down Keeler novels, they proved elusive. Keeler (1890-1967) faded from the scene long before his death, dropped by his publishers on both sides of the Atlantic yet continuing to write endless stories that have never seen the light of day. More...