Crimson Snow gathers vintage crime stories set in winter. The mysterious events chronicled by a distinguished array of contributors frequently take place at Christmas. There’s no denying that the supposed season of goodwill is a time of year that lends itself to detective fiction. On a cold night, it’s tempting to curl up by the fireside with a good mystery—and rather more pleasurable than indulging in endless online shopping. And more than that, claustrophobic Christmas house parties, when people may be cooped up with long-estranged relatives, can provide plenty of motives—and opportunities, as some of these stories demonstrate—for murder.
Winter also offers interesting possibilities for the crime writer. The ‘impossible crime’ story, a favourite sub-genre with readers ever since Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue, is a striking example. An appealing variant on the concept of murder in a locked room, with no apparent means by which the killer could get in or out, is to have a crime committed somewhere surrounded by snow—with no footprints leading to or from the corpse.
The classic Christmas crime story has enjoyed a remarkable resurgence of popularity in recent years. J. Jefferson Farjeon’s long-forgotten Mystery in White was a runaway best-seller in the final weeks of 2014, and twelve months later, two more titles published in the British Library’s Crime Classics series also enjoyed remarkable success. One was Muriel Doriel Hay’s The Santa Klaus Murder, an even more obscure title first published in the 1930s, and the other was the anthology Silent Nights, in which I collected a variety of short Yuletide mysteries by authors as diverse as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy L. Sayers. The British Library’s lead has been followed by other publishers, who have revived several crime novels set at the festive season, occasionally giving them new titles to underline their suitability as presents for the crime fan in one’s life. There is, it seems clear, a real enthusiasm for snow splashed with crimson…
Excellent as many Christmas mysteries are, it is inevitably the case that the seasonal background is more relevant in some novels than in others. The same is true when it comes to short crime fiction, but arguably the shorter form of mystery is better suited to making the most of such a setting. In the space of a few weeks, Silent Nights became one of the UK’s fastest-selling crime anthologies for many years, and sales were matched by a very positive reception from reviewers. Duly encouraged, the British Library asked me to delve into its vaults once again, to see if there was scope for another book of classic tales set amid the mist and snow.
As with previous anthologies in the Crime Classics series, my approach was to look for a mix of stories, some of them rarities, some of them slightly more familiar (at least to connoisseurs of vintage mysteries). I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of material available. Assisted by the invaluable know-how of experts in the field, such as Jamie Sturgeon and Barry Pike, I managed to track down a number of previously hidden gems. Only one author, Margery Allingham, features both in Silent Nights and this book.
I have been struck by the sheer number of leading crime writers who have, over the years, tried their hand at a seasonal mystery. No fewer than seven of the eleven authors featured here were members of the prestigious Detection Club, the world’s first social network for crime writers. Yet two of their stories are exceptionally obscure—those written by Christopher Bush and Macdonald Hastings, which feature their regular detectives, Ludovic Travers and Mr. Cork respectively.
In keeping with the playful nature of the puzzle story—which during the Golden Age of Murder between the two world wars often saw authors laying down an explicit ‘challenge to the reader’ to guess whodunit and why—Hastings’ story was published in the form of a Christmas prize competition. It appeared in the December issue of the monthly magazine Lilliput, and the solution was printed several months later after all the entries had been judged. The prize winners proved themselves to be excellent detectives, and readers of this book will have the chance to emulate their success: the solution to Hastings’ conundrum appears at the end of this book.
The other contributors include Julian Symons, whose reputation is as a stern critic of the light-hearted detective story who much preferred psychological suspense. Yet ‘The Santa Claus Club’ demonstrates that, especially in the early years of his career as a writer of fiction, Symons enjoyed indulging himself in the old-fashioned pleasures of the puzzle story. His friend of many years, Michael Gilbert, who was less bashful about his enthusiasm for the traditional mystery, is represented here by a characteristically readable tale.
Gilbert was an accomplished but unpretentious crime writer who never made any secret of the fact that his primary aim as an author was to entertain, and that is an aim I share as an anthologist. I think of the stories in Crimson Snow as comparable to the contents of a luxurious box of assorted chocolates. Their purpose is to give pleasure. I hope that the variety and quality of the selection as a whole will provide plentiful enjoyment for readers, and help for a few hours to take their minds off the cold reality of winter.
Martin Edwards
www.martinedwardsbooks.com