Detective Club Crime Classics – serie

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the third standalone novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’.Seymour Merriman’s holiday in France comes to an abrupt halt when his motorcycle starts leaking petrol. Following a lorry to find fuel, he discovers that it belongs to an English company making timber pit-props for coal mines back home. His suspicions of illegal activity are aroused when he sees the exact same lorry with a different number plate – and confirmed later with the shocking discovery of a body. What began as amateur detective work ends up as a job for Inspector Willis of Scotland Yard, a job requiring tenacity, ingenuity and guile . . .Freeman Wills Crofts’ transition from civil engineer on the Irish railways to world-renowned master of the detective mystery began with The Cask when he was fully 40 years old; but it was his third novel, the baffling The Pit-Prop Syndicate, that was singled out by his editors in 1930 as the first for inclusion in Collins’ prestigious new series of reprints ‘for crime connoisseurs’.This Detective Club classic is introduced by John Curran, author of The Hooded Gunman, and includes the bonus of an exclusive short story by Crofts, ‘Danger in Shroude Valley’.

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a disappearing corpse, a supernatural theory, and a genuinely shocking finale.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.“This most entertaining detective story is concerned with an amazing crime. The body of a wealthy man is discovered by his valet. The valet hurried to a friend of the dead man to tell him of the tragedy. They return to find the body gone! The motive of the murder becomes a deeper mystery still, and no clue seems to lead anywhere. Little by little, however, evidence is built up round a theory, and clever detective work triumphs in the end. For ingenuity and dramatic situations “The Mayfair Mystery” is hard to beat.”First published in 1907 as 2835 Mayfair, the book had caught the imagination of the reading public for its thrilling twists, its wit and imagination, and was chosen to be one of the first 12 classic books released by the Club. This new edition comes with a brand new introduction about the history of the Detective Club by HarperCollins’ editor, David Brawn.

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a blind man who stumbles across a murder. As he has not seen anything, the assassins let him go, but he finds it is impossible to walk away from murder.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.“By the purest of accidents the man who is blind accidentally comes on the scene of a murder. He cannot see what is happening but he can hear. He is seen by the assassins who, on discovering him to be blind, allow him to go without harming him. Soon afterwards he recovers his sight and later falls in love with a mysterious woman who is in some way involved in the crime…. The mystery deepens and only after a series of memorable thrills is the tangled skein unravelled.”Called Back by Hugh Conway, a pseudonym for Frederick John Fargus, was first published in 1883. It was a huge success, selling 350,000 copies in its first year, leading to a highly acclaimed stage play the following year. This new edition is introduced by novelist and crime writing expert, Martin Edwards, author of The Golden Age of Murder.

The fourth in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves a tragic accident during a shooting party. As the story switches between Paris and Hampshire, the possibility of it not being an accident seems to grow more likely.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.The Mystery of the Skeleton Key, first published in 1919, has the distinction of being the first detective novel commissioned and published by Collins, though it was Bernard Capes’ only book in the genre, as he died shortly before it was published. This is how the Detective Club announced their edition ten years later:“Mr Arnold Bennett, in a recent article, criticised the ad hoc characterisation and human interest in the detective novels of to-day. “The Mystery of the Skeleton Key” contains, in addition to a clever crime problem and plenty of thrills, a sensible love story, humour, excellent characterisation and strong human interest. The scenes are laid in Paris and Hampshire. The story deals with a crime committed in the grounds of a country house and the subsequent efforts of a clever young detective the track down the perpetrator. The Selection Committee of “The Detective Story Club” have no hesitation in recommending this splendid thriller as one which will satisfy the most exacting reader of detective fiction.”This new edition comes with a brand new introduction by Capes expert and anthologist, Hugh Lamb.

The latest in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins involves the murder of a notorious criminal in the home of a famous millionaire. But there are no clues, no evidence. The police are convinced that someone may have just committed the perfect crime.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.The Grell Mystery was first published in 1913 and selected as one of the launch titles for the Detective Club in 1929. It was written by former Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Frank Froest, who had turned in retirement to writing successful and authentic crime novels.“If you like a thriller with plenty of exciting incident and a clever plot you will like this first-rate detective novel by Frank Froest. Chief Inspector Foyle was confronted with the most bewildering case of his career when Goldenburg, the crook, was found foully murdered in the flat of Robert Grell, millionaire. Here was what appeared to be a perfect crime without a clue that led anywhere. But Foyle was more than a match for the arch-criminal and his masterly deduction and determination brought him a splendid triumph.”

The latest in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is a reissue of one of literature’s most audacious and thought-provoking novels of murder and intrigue, in hardback with its 1929 cover design and a brand new introduction.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.Originally published in 1886 as “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”, Robert Louis Stevenson’s book had been propelled to massive success following a favourable review in The Times, and by 1901 had sold a quarter of a million copies. This is how the Detective Club described the book:`In addition to being one of the most amazing crime stories ever written, “Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is probably the most remarkable of all the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson. It would be unfair to the reader to give away the secret of this thriller. Suffice it to say that every page grips and the unforgettable portrait of a mast criminal takes shape until the sensational climax is reached, a climax of dramatic intensity, without equal in the realm of detective fiction. If one wished to append a moral to this crime fantasy it might well be this: “The self you choose to-day, and not the self you chose yesterday, is the fate of to-morrow.”’This new printing includes a brand new introduction by classic horror story expert, Richard Dalby.

The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world’s first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891, and re-published by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called `The Perfect Crime’, Israel Zangwill’s novel invented the concept of the `locked room mystery’ and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter.`A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled. Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?’This new edition includes a brand new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert, Dr John Curran, author of `Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks’.

The latest in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is a thrilling mystery concerning twentieth-century pirates smuggling secret cargo across the English Channel.James Carthew-West, the penniless skipper of the Exmouth coasting vessel Luck and Charity, is chartered by a rich trader to carry unprofitable cargo to Flanders through the treacherous shallows of the Scheldt estuary and return with worthless mud ballast. His crewman Austin Voodgt, a former investigative journalist, is intent on revealing the true conspiracy behind this bizarre trade, but with each new discovery comes the growing realisation that there are lives at stake – beginning with their own.The Mystery of the Mud Flats, first published as WO2, was considered one of the most thrilling adventure stories of its time, combining a first-class mystery with the eternal lure of the sea. Introducing the Dutch maritime detective Austin Voogdt (later dubbed ‘Sherlock of the Sea’), and with its unique English Channel setting, this story of intrepid yachtsmen caught up in smuggling, espionage, and the growing menace of Germany as a military power, made truly exciting reading.This Detective Club classic is introduced by Nigel Moss, who explores how Maurice Drake’s popular seafaring novel epitomised pre-war ‘invasion literature’ and helped usher in a new genre of adventure spy fiction.

The Detective Story Club’s first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier.‘You will seek in vain in any book of reference for the name of The Crime Club. Its watchword is secrecy. Its members wear the mask of mystery, but they form the most powerful organisation against master criminals ever known. The Crime Club is an international club composed of men, but they spend their lives studying crime and criminals. In its headquarters are to be found men from Scotland Yard and many foreign detectives and secret service agents. This book tells of their greatest victories over crime and is written, in association with George Dilnot, by a former member of the criminal investigation department of Scotland Yard.’ With its highly evocative title, The Crime Club was the first collection of short stories published by the Detective Story Club. Co-authored by CID Superintendent Frank Froëst and police historian George Dilnot, these entertaining mysteries left readers guessing how many were based on true cases.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by David Brawn, who looks at how the The Crime Club inspired a turning point in British book publishing, and includes three newly discovered stories by Froëst and Dilnot.

First published by Collins in 1928, this was the first of 22 mystery novels by Vernon Loder, one of the most popular British mystery-thriller writers of his generation.When a guest at Stowe House is found dead, killed by a lethal dart, suspicion naturally falls on the resident collector of poisoned weapons from tribes in South America. With the entire house party as potential suspects, what part did the woman explorer play in this sinister tragedy? The local police are baffled, and call on the help of an amateur, whose recent assignment working with bushmen in Africa brings new insight into an increasingly unconventional investigation . . .This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by mystery genre collector and expert Nigel Moss, who looks at how one of the most dependable Golden Age authors has been forgotten.

Emile Gaboriau is France’s greatest detective writer. “The Blackmailers” is one of his most thrilling novels, and is full of exciting surprises. The story opens with a sensational bank robbery in Paris, suspicion falling immediately upon Prosper Bertomy, the young cashier whose extravagant living has been the subject of talk among his friends. Further investigation, however, reveals a network of blackmail and villainy which seems as if it would inevitably close round Prosper and the beautiful Madeleine who is deeply in love with him. Can he prove his innocence in the face of such damning evidence?

Edgar Wallace, greatest of all detective writers, has given us, in The Terror, one of his most amazing thrillers, packed with dramatic incident and breathless suspense. A sensational success as a play, it has been made into as exciting a film, and now comes the book to provide hours of wonderful reading for all who enjoy a first-rate detective story in Edgar Wallace’s characteristic style. Follow the unravelling of the mystery of the lonely house throughout whose dark corridors echoed the strange notes of a church organ? Where did it come from and who played it? Who was the hooded form which swept down in the night unseen upon its prey and dragged its victims to destruction? The Terror proves, once again, that there are many imitators – but only one Edgar Wallace.

THIS DETECTIVE STORY CLUB CLASSIC is introduced by Dr John Curran, who looks at how Anna Katherine Green was a pioneer who inspired a new generation of crime writers, in particular a young woman named Agatha Christie.When the retired merchant Horatio Leavenworth is found shot dead in his mansion library, suspicion falls on his nieces, Mary and Eleanore, who stand to inherit his vast fortune. Their lawyer, Everett Raymond, infatuated with one of the sisters, is determined that the official investigator, detective Ebenezer Gryce, widens the inquiry to less obvious suspects.The Leavenworth Case, the first detective novel written by a woman, immortalised its author Anna Katharine Green as ‘The Mother of Detective Fiction’. Admired for her careful plotting and legal accuracy, the book enjoyed enormous success both in England and America, and was widely translated. It was republished by The Detective Story Club after Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, speaking at the 1928 Thanksgiving Day dinner of the American Society in London, remarked: ‘An American woman, a successor of Poe, Anna K. Green, gave us The Leavenworth Case, which I still think one of the best detective stories ever written.’

Fergus Hume was renowned as the bestselling mystery writer of Victorian times after his first book, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, broke all records. In 1901 he returned to form with this ingenious tale, selected to represent Hume’s prolific output by Collins’ Detective Club panel in 1930.Cicero Gramp was, according to himself, a ‘professor of elocution and eloquence’ – to anyone else he was no more than an engaging and extremely craft vagabond. Hence it was that he found himself awakened from his sleep in the corner of the churchyard, the cheapest available lodging, by men’s voices at an hour past midnight. Two dark figures silhouetted for an instant against the white mausoleum where lay the body of the millionaire Richard Marlow. Then the turning of a key in the iron door of the vault. Silence. Two figures moving back into the night carrying a sinister burden – what Gramp guessed was the body of Marlow. But when a search was made in the vault, Marlow’s coffin was found shut, and not empty: only the body in it was not Marlow’s but that of another man – murdered! And that is only the first puzzle in The Millionaire Mystery . . .

Marking 100 years since publication, The Adventuress was the first full-length novel to feature ‘scientific detective’ Craig Kennedy, who was dubbed ‘the American Sherlock Holmes’ and the first fictional detective to use forensic science.Who killed Marshall Maddox of Maddox Munitions, Inc., the inventors of the top secret telautomaton? Was his death retribution for a double life, or was it due to the covetousness of some schemer? Even Craig Kennedy is challenged by the diabolical scientific inventiveness and ruthlessness at the centre of the crime – and by Paquita, the mysterious adventuress . . .Arthur B. Reeve (1880-1936) was a New York author and criminologist whose creation, the scientific detective Craig Kennedy, became famous as ‘the American Sherlock Holmes’. Reeve’s cutting-edge stories, newspaper serials and movies about Craig Kennedy made him the most popular detective writer of the era, and The Adventuress was his first full-length novel for Harper & Brothers, published in 1917 as part of the company’s centenary year celebrations.This Detective Club classic is introduced by publisher David Brawn, who examines the rise and fall of Arthur B. Reeve, whose bestselling fiction was credited as introducing forensic science to real police work, yet 100 years later has been all but forgotten.

This exciting thriller by the late Frank Froest, himself a detective of international fame, will satisfy the most exacting of detective story connoisseurs. Against a familiar London background we have here a tale of breath-taking adventure – knifing, arson, racing-taxicabs, and shooting-to-kill.Lost in a London fog, young Jimmie Hallett is accosted by a frightened woman who hands him a package and flees. Within hours, he is being questioned about the murder of the girl’s father and a dangerous international conspiracy. Can genial detective Weir Menzies, even with all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him, succeed in outwitting a faceless gang of organised thieves and killers?Frank Froëst, the highly decorated Superintendent of Scotland Yard’s C.I.D., began his retirement from the Metropolitan Police by writing The Grell Mystery, acclaimed as the first crime novel to incorporate authentic police procedures. With George Dilnot, co-author of the story collection The Crime Club, Froëst wrote one more novel, the ambitious and thrilling The Rogues’ Syndicate, published in 1916 and also released as a silent movie, Millionaire Hallet’s Adventure. The book was republished in April 1930 by the Detective Story Club, but was inadvertently sourced from an abridged, Americanised version called The Maelstrom.This Detective Club classic restores the full text of the British first edition, and includes an introduction by the Detective Story Club’s original series editor, F. T. Smith.(This book is COMPLETE AND UNABRIDGED, despite what some retailers have put in their listings.)

This exciting thriller by the late Frank Froest, himself a detective of international fame, will satisfy the most exacting of detective story connoisseurs. Against a familiar London background we have here a tale of breath-taking adventure – knifing, arson, racing-taxicabs, and shooting-to-kill.Lost in a London fog, young Jimmie Hallett is accosted by a frightened woman who hands him a package and flees. Within hours, he is being questioned about the murder of the girl’s father and a dangerous international conspiracy. Can genial detective Weir Menzies, even with all the resources of Scotland Yard behind him, succeed in outwitting a faceless gang of organised thieves and killers?Frank Froëst, the highly decorated Superintendent of Scotland Yard’s C.I.D., began his retirement from the Metropolitan Police by writing The Grell Mystery, acclaimed as the first crime novel to incorporate authentic police procedures. With George Dilnot, co-author of the story collection The Crime Club, Froëst wrote one more novel, the ambitious and thrilling The Rogues’ Syndicate, published in 1916 and also released as a silent movie, Millionaire Hallet’s Adventure. The book was republished in April 1930 by the Detective Story Club, but was inadvertently sourced from an abridged, Americanised version called The Maelstrom.This Detective Club classic restores the full text of the British first edition, and includes an introduction by the Detective Story Club’s original series editor, F. T. Smith.

A ‘shilling shocker’ from the late 19th century, a macabre novel of murder and its consequences, originally published as a Christmas Annual for adults and now reissued complete with a hilarious parody by satirist Andrew Lang released the same Christmas.In the eyes of the law, murder is murder. When Dr North discovers that his beloved Philippa – surely the most beautiful murderess who ever crossed the pages of fiction – has killed her abusive husband, he must decide whether to turn her in or take the law into his own hands. There are dark days ahead as he wrestles with his conscience: can a crime ever be justified? And is Philippa the villain or the victim?Combining the thrills of the Penny Dreadful with the melodrama of the Sensation Novel, Hugh Conway wrote some of the most successful Christmas crime stories ever published. Dark Days followed his enthralling Called Back as a Christmas Annual, published just before his untimely death ended a writing career of only four years, robbing the world of one of the most popular detective writers since Wilkie Collins.THIS DETECTIVE STORY CLUB CLASSIC is introduced by David Brawn, and includes Much Darker Days by Scottish writer, critic and satirist Andrew Lang, a hilarious retelling of the story which sold almost as well as the original.

Driven to madness by the cruelty of a small group of people, a young novelist sets about taking murderous revenge.Simon Whalley is an unsuccessful novelist who is gradually going to pieces under the strain of successive setbacks. Brooding over his troubles, and driven to despair by the cruelty of his neighbours, he decides to take his revenge in the only way he knows how – by planning to murder them . . .Lynn Brock made his name in the 1920s and 30s with the popular ‘Colonel Gore’ mysteries, winning praise from fans and critics including Dorothy L. Sayers and T. S. Eliot. In 1932, however, Brock abandoned the formulaic Gore for a new kind of narrative, a ‘psychological thriller’ in the vein of Francis Iles’ recent sensation, Malice Aforethought. Advertised by Collins as ‘one of the most remarkable books that we have ever published’, the unconventional and doom-laden Nightmare provided readers with a disturbing portrayal of what it might take to turn an outwardly normal man into a cold-blooded murderer.This Detective Story Club Classic is introduced by Rob Reef, author of the ‘John Stableford’ Golden Age mysteries, who finds philosophy at the heart of Brock’s landmark crime novel.

A victim is bludgeoned to death with a woodworker’s rasp in this first case for the famed gentleman detective Anthony Gethryn - the latest in a new series of classic detective novels from the vaults of HarperCollins.Ex-Secret Service agent Anthony Gethryn is killing time working for a newspaper when he is sent to cover the murder of Cabinet minister John Hoode, bludgeoned to death in his country home with a wood-rasp. Gethryn is convinced that the prime suspect, Hoode’s secretary Alan Deacon, is innocent, but to prove it he must convince the police that not everyone else has a cast-iron alibi for the time of the murder.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by crime fiction expert and writer Tony Medawar, who investigates the forgotten career of one of the Golden Age’s finest detective story writers.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the forgotten second novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed `The King of Detective Story Writers’ and recognised as one of the `big four’ Golden Age crime authors.When the body of Sir William Ponson is found in the Cranshaw River near his home of Luce Manor, it is assumed to be an accident – until the evidence points to murder. Inspector Tanner of Scotland Yard discovers that those who would benefit most from Sir William’s death seem to have unbreakable alibis, and a mysterious fifth man whose footprints were found at the crime scene is nowhere to be found . . .This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by Dolores Gordon-Smith, author of the Jack Haldean Golden Age mysteries.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the forgotten second novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’.When the body of Sir William Ponson is found in the Cranshaw River near his home of Luce Manor, it is assumed to be an accident – until the evidence points to murder. Inspector Tanner of Scotland Yard discovers that those who would benefit most from Sir William’s death seem to have unbreakable alibis, and a mysterious fifth man whose footprints were found at the crime scene is nowhere to be found . . .This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by Dolores Gordon-Smith, author of the Jack Haldean Golden Age mysteries.

From a murder in South Africa to the tracking down of a master criminal in northern Scotland, this is a true classic of Golden Age detective fiction by one of its most accomplished champions.When a signalman discovers a mutilated body inside a railway tunnel near Groote Park, it seems to be a straightforward case of a man struck by a passing train. But Inspector Vandam of the Middeldorp police isn’t satisfied that Albert Smith’s death was accidental, and he sets out to prove foul play in a baffling mystery which crosses continents from deepest South Africa to the wilds of northern Scotland, where an almost identical crime appears to have been perpetrated.The Groote Park Murder was the last of Freeman Wills Crofts’ standalone crime novels, foreshadowing his iconic Inspector French series and helping to cement his reputation (according to his publishers) as ‘the greatest and most popular detective writer in the world’. Like The Cask, The Ponson Case and The Pit-Prop Syndicate before it, here were a delightfully ingenious plot, impeccable handling of detail, and an overwhelming surprise ‘curtain’ from a masterful crime writer on the cusp of global success.This Detective Club classic is introduced with an essay by Freeman Wills Crofts, unseen since 1937, about ‘The Writing of a Detective Novel’.

Gentleman detective Anthony Gethryn is in a race against time to save an innocent man from the hangman’s noose.Colonel Anthony Gethryn is recalled from a holiday in Spain to solve a murder in the November fogs of London. He finds that his wife is sheltering Mrs Bronson, whose husband is in prison awaiting execution for the murder of a gamekeeper six months before. A petition for reprieve has been rejected and Bronson will shortly hang for someone else’s crime. Convinced by Mrs Bronson of her husband’s innocence, Gethryn embarks on a seemingly hopeless race against time to overthrow the guilty verdict and find the real murderer – and he has only five days before Bronson’s date with the hangman’s noose.The Noose saw the return of Philip MacDonald’s gentleman detective Anthony Ruthven Gethryn, whose debut in The Rasp six years earlier had been a big success. Judged to be his best book yet, The Noose had the distinction of being chosen as the first book to be published in Collins’ Crime Club in May 1930, helping to immortalise it as one of the seminal books of the crime genre.This Detective Story Club classic includes an introduction by H. R. F. Keating, which first appeared in the Crime Club’s 1985 ‘Disappearing Detectives’ series.

Exactly 150 years since its publication in 1868, this reissue of Collins’ popular Detective Club edition of The Moonstone offers crime fiction fans the chance to read the book that is acclaimed as the very first detective novel in the English language.At a party celebrating her eighteenth birthday, Rachel Verinder wears the stunning yellow diamond she unexpectedly inherited from her uncle, unaware that it was plundered from a sacred Indian shrine fifty years earlier. When the jewel goes missing later that night, suspicions are raised and accusations fly in all directions. Sifting through divergent accounts of what happened, the indomitable Sergeant Cuff must find the Moonstone and the truth about its mysterious disappearance.Recognised as the very first detective novel in the English language, The Moonstone (1868) earned Wilkie Collins the reputation of the godfather of the classic English detective story, with Dorothy L. Sayers declaring, ‘Nothing human is perfection, but The Moonstone comes about as near perfection as anything of the kind ever can.’ For 150 years its intricate locked-room puzzle and multiple narrators have influenced generations of mystery authors.This Detective Club classic reproduces Collins’ slightly abridged version of the novel, originally designed to make the long nineteenth-century text more accessible. It is introduced by the iconic crime writing duo G.D.H. and M. Cole, who analyse the popularity of Wilkie Collins’ groundbreaking sensation novel.

One of the defining novels of the entire crime genre, Gaston Leroux’s The Mystery of the Yellow Room has inspired readers and writers including Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, and is now republished in hardback in the Detective Club series with a brand new introduction.Breaking down her door in response to the sounds of a violent attack and a gunshot, Mademoiselle Stangerson’s rescuers are appalled to find her dying on the floor, clubbed down by a large mutton bone. But in a room with a barred window and locked door, how could her assailant have entered and escaped undetected? While bewildered police officials from the Sûreté begin an exhaustive investigation, so too does a young newspaperman, Joseph Rouletabille, who will encounter more impossibilities before this case can be closed.The Mystery of the Yellow Room by Gaston Leroux, best remembered today as the author of The Phantom of the Opera, has been deservedly praised for more than a century as a defining book in the ‘impossible crime’ genre, as readable now as when it first appeared in French in 1907.This Detective Club classic includes an introduction by John Curran, who discusses how the book impressed and influenced a young Agatha Christie, was lauded by genre giants including John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen and Julian Symons, and remains to this day one of the most effective and enjoyable locked room mysteries ever written.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the seminal first novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, once dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’ and recognised as one of the ‘big four’ Golden Age crime authors.The unloading of a consignment of French wine from the steamship Bullfinch is interrupted by a gruesome discovery in a broken cask leaking sawdust and gold sovereigns. But when the shipping clerk returns with the police, the cask and its macabre contents have gone. Following the clues to Paris, Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard enlists the help of the genial French detective M. Lefarge to check motives and alibis in their hunt for evidence of a particularly fiendish murder.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by Freeman Wills Crofts himself in a unique preface from 1946 about The Cask’s origins.

From the Collins Crime Club archive, the third standalone novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, dubbed ‘The King of Detective Story Writers’.Seymour Merriman’s holiday in France comes to an abrupt halt when his motorcycle starts leaking petrol. Following a lorry to find fuel, he discovers that it belongs to an English company making timber pit-props for coal mines back home. His suspicions of illegal activity are aroused when he sees the exact same lorry with a different number plate – and confirmed later with the shocking discovery of a body. What began as amateur detective work ends up as a job for Inspector Willis of Scotland Yard, a job requiring tenacity, ingenuity and guile . . .Freeman Wills Crofts’ transition from civil engineer on the Irish railways to world-renowned master of the detective mystery began with The Cask when he was fully 40 years old; but it was his third novel, the baffling The Pit-Prop Syndicate, that was singled out by his editors in 1930 as the first for inclusion in Collins’ prestigious new series of reprints ‘for crime connoisseurs’.This Detective Club classic is introduced by John Curran, author of The Hooded Gunman, and includes the bonus of an exclusive short story by Crofts, ‘Danger in Shroude Valley’.

The latest in the series of classic crime novels from the vaults of HarperCollins for the detective connoisseur is the only novel by the Welsh writer R.A.V. Morris.The chance discovery of a young man’s body floating in a Sussex stream provides the first clue to the mysterious disappearance of Sir James Lyttleton, who sent his daughter a curt wire announcing his departure for America before completely vanishing. But this is no ordinary missing persons inquiry – when Sir James’s body turns up inside another man’s coffin, journalist James Dawson and Chief Inspector Candlish of Scotland Yard find themselves on the trail of a particularly ruthless and ingenious murderer.This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by author and editor Douglas A. Anderson, whose authoritative books on Kenneth Morris led to the discovery of R.A.V. Morris’s true identity.