The longer you spend trying to decode this book title, the more confused you will be. You can probably think of six different interpretations before breakfast, depending on what you think story, classic, crime, and books might mean in this context. (Don’t worry about the, of, in, and 100.)

So what do we really have here? The answer is that we have a combo of lit crit and lit history, all concerning English-language mysteries published between 1900 and 1950.

I started writing my own review, but then I found that an Amazon reviewer whose screen name is ceric7 did a better job than I did, so I will simply quote their review instead of writing my own. But I will first quote my favorite sentence from the Edwards book: “Readers can recognize the humanity in Christie’s retired colonels and flighty housemaids, even if they have never encountered a retired colonel or housemaid in their lives.”

And now, with no further ado, a fragment of ceric7’s review:

Each chapter follows a pattern. First, there is a general survey of the chapter theme, then a summary of the plots (without spoilers) of at least three and up to eleven of the relevant books, each summary ending with a brief biography of the author. Chapter Six ,“Serpents in Eden”, for example, surveys books set in rural Britain from Wilkie Collins’ “The Moonstone” (1868) to Ann Cleeves Shetland series taking in authors well- and lesser-known such as Agatha Christie and John Ferguson (1871/3-1952).Summarised are “The Secret of High Eldersham” (my least favourite Miles Burton),”Death under Sail” ‘(an early C P Snow), John Bude’s “The Sussex Downs Murder”,(a good methodical detective yarn) and “Sinister Crag” by Newton Gayle (the pen name of Muna Lee and Maurice Guiness ), which I had not encountered before. So a nice mixture of familiar and unfamiliar, the often- read and the to-be-explored.

There will be something here for all but the most expert of classic crime buffs. Endless debate will had on which books and authors should/should not have been included…. I did not much enjoy this book, finding the format rather repetitive. It may be that it is better used as a dip-into rather than a read from cover-to-cover.

Categories: Books