"A great collection of "lost" short stories from Golden Age detective writers.
The vast majority of these were published in magazines and had never been collected, and one had never before been published. Agatha Christie's Wife of the Kenite was the only one I had ever read. This led me to find several new authors to check out, and I ended up reading a few new books because of it.
It's really cool (for those of us who dig this sort of stuff) that they started making these collections.

I've left links to each story with a longer review in case anyone is interested in a particular one.

Before Insulin by J.J. Connington
Before insulin, diabetes was a death sentence.



This was a mystery about an inheritance, not so much a murder.

The Inverness Cape by Leo Bruce
Sergeant Beef tells the story of the perfect alibi.
Or so it would seem...



Dark Waters by Freeman Wills Crofts
A shady solicitor decides to kill his client and friend when it becomes apparent that he's going to get caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His old friend wants to get some of his securities out, and unfortunately, there is nothing left due to his mishandling of the funds.



Linckes' Great Case by Georgette Heyer
I love Heyer but this isn't her best work.
The plot was a lot like the one in Agatha Christie's Poirot short, The Submarine Plans, which also came out in 1923 in a different detective magazine. Submarines and spies were a hot topic that year.
Christie's little Belgian detective did it better, though.



Calling James Braithwaite by Nicholas Blake
Murder on a sea voyage!



Nobody likes Braithwaite. Not even his wife.
He hires the gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways to pretend to be his secretary while looking out for anything hinky.
And things do get hinky.

The Elusive Bullet by John Rhode
Back, and to the left.



Dr. Priestley is called upon to try and exonerate the heir of a wealthy businessman who was shot on a train after they were heard arguing. No gun is found, but it turns out that the nephew hopped on the train, as well. <--what are the odds he didn't off the old man?

The Euthanasia of Hilary's Aunt by Cyril Hare
Hilary is such a douchebag character.

Ok, so he's always been a wastrel (I love that word, btw) and had gotten himself into some hot water writing a few bad checks, which led his family to pack him off to Australia. After his brother and father died, he came back to England and quickly ran through the family fortune that came his way.
Now what?



The Girdle of Dreams by Vincent Cormier
A clever jewel robbery stumps the police.



The Fool and the Perfect Murder by Arthur W. Upfield
Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte is a biracial detective from the Australian outback.
Lucky for Bony, the white ancestry in him allows him to be intelligent, and the aboriginal ancestry in him allows him to track a hawk on a cloudy day.
sigh
There's some cringy stuff here, yes. I believe the term is unintentionally racist. If that's something you can't abide (and I do understand) you should feel free to skip this one.



Bread Upon the Waters by A.A. Milne
No good deed goes unpunished.
Or at least, this is the moral our narrator seems to be telling us.



The Man with the Twisted Thumb by Anthony Berkeley
A bit of romance with the mystery.
When a young woman who is down on her luck decides to throw caution to the wind and take a vacation to Monte Carlo, she finds more adventure than she bargained for.
But that's not necessarily a bad thing.



The Rum Punch by Christianna Brand
Sergeant Troot serves some punch.



All Troot wants to do is drive his children and wife to the seaside for a vacation in his lovely car. To make some extra pocket change, he's agreed to help the wealthy family down the road with their party and ends up topping off the drinks at the punch bowl. Be back by 9, honey!
But then - MURDER!

Victoria Pumphrey by H.C. Bailey
Victoria comes from old money.
But all that money is long gone.
So, when an old servant recognizes her and asks if she will play detective to help protect the assets of a young boy in his charge, she perks up. A job is a job, but this job sounds far more interesting than anything else she has available to her.



The Starting-Handle Murder by Roy Vickers
This one was kind of wild.
So these two best friends are in love with the same woman. She (of course) marries the one who end up being a nutter. It's a curse!
And after a particularly bad episode, the man who has silently watched from afar as his friend ruined the life of his lady-love, finally snaps and kills the dude.
But in one of those super cool I've-got-an-airtight-alibi kind of ways.
Very clever, sir.



The Wife of the Kenite by Agatha Christie.
Yikes, Agatha!
Ok, so most of Christie's short stories have been reprinted in multiple collections, and I've read my fair share.
BUT.
I've only run across this story once.
It's dark.



A great collection that any fan of golden-era detective fiction will likely love.
Recommended."

"A fun locked room mystery from the creator of Winnie the Pooh.



It felt like Milne was writing a mystery spoof at times that poked good-hearted fun at the genre, and it added a layer of fun to the tale. I didn't realize that Milne had written anything other than children's stories until I came across his tasty short story Bread Upon the Waters in the detective anthology Bodies from the Library



Amateur actor and patron to the arts, Mark Ablett, is hosting a lavish house party when he announces that he has just received a letter from his wastrel brother in Australia, that he will be arriving the next day.
His brother, Robert, arrives, ruffling a few feathers before he is shown into the house.
Fast forward a few hours, and a gunshot is heard in the locked study.
When the door is finally opened, Robert is found dead, shot through the head. And no Mark in sight.
His cousin/assistant is convinced that Mark shot his brother in self-defence and then ran away, but one of the houseguests isn't so sure that things add up that way.
dun, dun, dunnnnn.



In this one, you have an amateur detective in the character of Tony Gillingham, a likable young man who enjoys trying on different hats when it comes to his career. He decides to try his hand at solving this mystery, and wrangles in another houseguest (Bill Beverley) to play Watson to his Holmes.
As it is with most of these kinds of stories, the solution to the whodunnit and the villain of the piece's reasons were a tad over the top.



Really loved the blustery voice of the narrator, William Sutherland, but as someone who has a hard time hearing things occasionally, he had a tendency to mumble into his mustache (or that's what I was imagining, anyway), so I wouldn't recommend this audiobook to someone with hearing problems.



Overall, a nice way to spend a rainy afternoon.
Recommended.
"