This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 16 tales by masters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including a newly discovered Agatha Christie crime story that has not been seen since 1922.

 At a time when crime and thriller writing has once again overtaken the sales of general and literary fiction, Bodies from the Library unearths lost stories from the Golden Age, that period between the World Wars when detective fiction captured the public's imagination and saw the emergence of some of the world's cleverest and most popular storytellers.

 This anthology brings together 16 forgotten tales that have either been published only once before - perhaps in a newspaper or rare magazine - or have never before appeared in print. From a previously unpublished 1917 script featuring Ernest Bramah's blind detective Max Carrados, to early 1950s crime stories written for London's Evening Standard by Cyril Hare, Freeman Wills Crofts and A. A. Milne, it spans five decades of writing by masters of the Golden Age.

 Most anticipated of all are the contributions by women writers: the first detective story by Georgette Heyer, unseen since 1923; an unpublished story by Christianna Brand, creator of Nanny McPhee; and a dark tale by Agatha Christie published only in an Australian journal in 1922 during her 'Grand Tour' of the British Empire.

 With other stories by Detection Club stalwarts Anthony Berkeley, H. C. Bailey, J. J. Connington, John Rhode and Nicholas Blake, plus Vincent Cornier, Leo Bruce, Roy Vickers and Arthur Upfield, this essential collection harks back to a time before forensic science - when murder was a complex business.

Bodies from the Library - Lost Tales of Mystery and Suspense from the Golden Age of Detection

This anthology of rare stories of crime and suspense brings together 18 tales from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction for the first time in book form, including uncollected stories by Ngaio Marsh and John Dickson Carr. 

 The Golden Age of detective fiction had begun inauspiciously with the publication of E. C. Bentley's schismatic Trent's Last Case in 1913, but it hit its stride in 1920 when both Agatha Christie and Freeman Wills Crofts - latterly crowned queen and king of the genre - had crime novels published for the first time. They ushered in two decades of exemplary mystery writing, the era of the whodunit, the impossible crime and the locked-room mystery, with stories that have thrilled and baffled generations of readers.

 This new volume in the Bodies from the Library series features the work of 18 prolific authors who, like Christie and Crofts, saw their popularity soar during the Golden Age. Aside from novels, they all wrote short fiction - stories, serials and plays - and although most of them have been collected in books over the last 100 years, here are the ones that got away.

 In this book you will encounter classic series detectives including Colonel Gore, Roger Sheringham, Hildegarde Withers and Henri Bencolin; Hercule Poirot solves 'The Incident of the Dog's Ball'; Roderick Alleyn returns to New Zealand in a recently discovered television drama by Ngaio Marsh; and Dorothy L. Sayers' chilling 'The House of the Poplars' is published for the first time.

 With a full-length novella by John Dickson Carr and an unpublished radio script by Cyril Hare, this diverse collection concludes with some early 'flash fiction' commissioned by Collins' Crime Club in 1938. Each mini story had to feature an orange, resulting in six very different tales from Peter Cheyney, Ethel Lina White, David Hume, Nicholas Blake, John Rhode and - in his only foray into writing detective fiction - the publisher himself, William Collins.

Bodies from the Library 3 - Lost Tales of Mystery and Suspense from the Golden Age of Detection

Frank Cairns, auteur renommé de romans noirs, a enfin imaginé le crime parfait. Et ce crime, il va le commettre lui-même !
Frank est déterminé à se venger du chauffard qui a tué son jeune fils avant de s'enfuir. Si l'affaire déroute la police, Frank, mu par sa soif de justice, parvient à remonter la piste jusqu'à mettre la main sur George Rattery, une brute épaisse. Frank décide alors de se lier d'amitié avec lui pour parvenir à ses fins, tout en consignant dans un carnet les détails de son plan pour tuer l'assassin de son fils.
Alors que Frank s'apprête à passer à l'acte, Rattery tombe sur le carnet et menace Frank de l'envoyer à ses avocats. Mais Rattery est empoisonné, et les soupçons se portent sur l'écrivain.
L'un de ses amis lui présente alors le détective privé Nigel Strangeways, le seul capable de l'innocenter...
Initialement publié en France en 1938 avant d'être réédité en 1969 à l'occasion de l'adaptation cinématographique de Claude Chabrol avec Jean Yanne, ce chef-d'oeuvre de la littérature policière est inédit au format poche.

Que la bête meure

Un chauffard tue un jeune garçon avant de prendre la fuite. Désespéré, le père entreprend la traque du meurtrier. A force d'obstination, et aidé par le destin, il est mis sur la piste de Paul, un être odieux, vulgaire, haï de tous, véritable tyran domestique envers sa femme et son fils. Il parvient à entrer dans l'intimité de cette famille, bien décidé à se venger et tuer l'assassin de son fils. Il profite pour cela d'une sortie en bateau, mais tout ne se déroule pas comme prévu...Paru en 1938, ce roman à énigme ambitieux, sombre et intense, a été adapté au cinéma par Claude Chabrol en 1969 avec Michel Duchaussoy dans le rôle du père et un Jean Yanne parfait en individu abject.

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