The Spoilt Kill (British Library Crime Classics)

Discover the captivating treasures buried in the British Library's archives. Largely inaccessible to the public until now, these enduring crime classics were written in the golden age of detective fiction.

'The grey eyes, so apt for tragedy, looked steadily up at me.

"You can't trust me, can you?" she said.'

Shentall's, a long-established institution of the Staffordshire Potteries industry is under attack. With its designs leaked to international competition and its prices undercut, private investigator Hedley Nicholson has been tasked with finding the culprit of the suspected sabotage.

But industrial espionage may just be the beginning. Delving further into the churning heart of Shentall's Pottery, Nicholson's prying is soon to unearth rumours of bonds cruelly smashed to pieces, grievances irrevocably baked in stone and a very real body, turning and turning in the liquid clay.

First published in 1961, The Spoilt Kill received widespread critical acclaim and praise from contemporary crime writers such as Julian Symons. Widely heralded as a perfect golden age mystery, this piece of British crime fiction marked a shift in the genre towards mysteries characterized by psychological elements. It was awarded the CWA Gold Dagger and remains a finely crafted masterpiece of the crime genre.

Mary Kelly (1927-2017) was a pen name of Mary Theresa Coolican, an English crime writer best known for the Inspector Brett Nightingale series and her Gold Dagger Award-winning novel The Spoilt Kill. The Christmas Egg, first published in 1958, is a fine example of her unique and unconventional mystery writing.