Today, 'locked room mystery' is too often used as shorthand for any kind of closed-circle detective story, but this collection of classic short mysteries is the real deal, where the question is not simply whodunit?, but howdunit? And for puzzle-obsessives and those who love to see how the greatest deceptions are unraveled, As If by Magic offers some of the most tantalising criminal conundrums ever devised.
Gathering sixteen perplexing problems from a troupe of writers including obscure rediscoveries and legends of the Golden Age of Crime such as John Dickson Carr, Christianna Brand and Julian Symons, Martin Edwards sets the stage for one of the most entertaining anthologies of impossible and locked room mysteries in the history of the genre.
Martin Edwards is an award-winning crime writer best known for two series of novels set in Liverpool and the Lake District. He is series consultant for British Library Crime Classics, the Vice Chair of the Crime Writers' Association, and President of the Detection Club. The Golden Age of Murder, his study of the Detection Club, was published in 2015 to international acclaim, and has been nominated for both the Edgar and Agatha awards for the year's best book about the genre. He received the CWA 2020 Diamond Dagger Award for sustained excellence in crime writing and significant contributions to the genre, joining the ranks of Sue Grafton, Ian Rankin, and Lee Child.