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The Life of Crime

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What to expect

Winner of four major prizes for the best critical/biographical book related to crime fiction: the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating Awards; and shortlisted for both the Agatha and Gold Dagger Awards.
‘Martin Edwards is the closest thing there has been to a philosopher of crime writing.’ The Times

In the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction.

Author Martin Edwards is a multi-award-winning crime novelist, the President of the Detection Club, archivist of the Crime Writers’ Association and series consultant to the British Library’s highly successful series of crime classics, and therefore uniquely qualified to write this book. He has been a widely respected genre commentator for more than thirty years, winning the CWA Diamond Dagger for making a significant contribution to crime writing in 2020, when he also compiled and published Howdunit: A Masterclass in Crime Writing by Members of the Detection Club and the novel Mortmain Hall. His critically acclaimed The Golden Age of Murder (Collins Crime Club, 2015) was a landmark study of Detective Fiction between the wars.

The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative – and readable – study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors – from the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell – into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.

Critics Review

'Magisterial but wickedly entertaining ... reliably readable and frequently amusing. It also inspires awe: Edwards combines wide reading with a good memory, meticulous control over his unruly material, critical acumen and sheer bloody persistence.' ANDREW TAYLOR, THE SPECTATOR

'As entertaining and illuminating a history of crime and thriller fiction as I've ever read.' IAN RANKIN

'Impressively scholarly and joyfully anecdotal... it's hard to imagine this book being superseded for many years to come.' MORNING STAR

'Vastly entertaining ... [Edwards] plots the development of the genre and the bizarre lives of writers ... You'll find all your favourites here, from Edgar Allan Poe to PD James ... But be warned - you'll end up with a reading list as long as a giant's arm.' DENIS MANN, DAILY EXPRESS

'A magisterial history of mysteries and their creators.' THE TIMES

'There is plenty here for mystery readers, whether well-versed in the genre's history or not --and mystery writers will welcome this book as a resource.'
THE NEW YORK TIMES

'A magisterial work... THE LIFE OF CRIME does more than just inform, entertain and provoke, it also sends new readers back to old books.'
THE WASHINGTON POST

REVIEWS FOR MARTIN EDWARDS:

'Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight so enthusiastically and, for the reader, so enjoyably' THE TIMES

'Illuminating and entertaining - provides a new way of looking at old favourites.' LEN DEIGHTON, author of The Ipcress File

'Forensically sharp and exhaustively informed... Crime fiction is driven by death. In this superbly compendious and entertaining book, Edwards ensures that dozens of authorial corpses are gloriously reborn.' MARK LAWSON, Guardian

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