A CLASSIC ENGLISH CRIME

In honor of the Agatha Christie Centenary, leading members of the Crime Writers' Association offer thirteen stories set in the Golden Age of detective fiction, between the two world wars

These sure-to-delight original short mysteries, written by a baker's dozen of today's masters to celebrate the centenary of Agatha Christie's birth, display the wit, acuity and range that distinguish the work of the woman they honor. Following the sole directive to set the stories in the years between the world wars, such authors as Peter Lovesey, Susan Moody, David Williams and Celia Dale demonstrate their talents. Notable even in such a stellar collection is Julian Symons's "Holocaust at Mayhem Parva," in which characters from the game Clue are joined by a certain Miss Hstet arple for a poisonous tea at the vicar's table. In Margaret Yorkes's insightful "Means to Murder," the country-house way of life--and death--is recollected in something less than tranquility. Heald pits Miss Marple against Poirot in "Experts for the Prosection," while H.R.F. Keating uses his ear for foreign twists on the English language in "Jack Fell Down." Also included are the versatile Paula Gosling, Catherine Aird, Liza Cody, Robert Barnard and Simon Brett. Not a single story disappoints.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A middling-to-poorish collection of 13 new detective stories, each set in England between the wars, to celebrate Agatha Christie's centenary. Most of the Crime Writers Association contributors, hamstrung by the conventions of the formal short story of detection, offer transparently obvious puzzles (Margaret Yorke, David Williams, Celia Dale) or slender tales self-consciously laced with parody (Julian Symons, Simon Brett, and editor Heald), though there are welcome exceptions: Susan Moody charmingly reworks an old plot device; Peter Lovesey provides some nostalgic byplay between his two police officers; Catherine Aird offers a Sayersesque explanation of poisoning from across a dining table; and--in the three best stories--H. R. F. Keating, Paula Gosling, and Robert Barnard all show just how much can be done by writers who approach this formulaic genre with conviction. For the most part, though, there's a sad lack of the ingenuity, the grasp of the rhetoric of Golden Age plotting, that made Christie inimitable. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.