Though mysteries are still written every year, it seems to me there was a “golden age” of detective fiction in the early to mid 20th Century. Numerous detective shows (among them,Grantchester, the excellent show on PBS) celebrate this period of time and present mysteries in their purest form. Resorting to Murder, a collection of holiday mysteries, edited by Martin Edwards, sent me back in time when the sleuths were dogged, the locales were exotic, and the mysteries were solved by human intellect.
The fourteen stories in this collection were each written by a different author from crime fiction. My favorites included “Holiday Task” by Leo Bruce in which a body is thrown from a cliff, “Where is Mr. Manetot?” by Phyllis Bentley in which a historian goes missing, and “The House of Screams” by Gerald Findler in which—well—a house is screaming. Many of these stories “star” a detective that is well-known in the author’s other works. If it bothers you not to have read much about them, this is not the book for you. The editor does a great job of including an introduction to the author and his characters in the beginning of each story.
As with any short story collection, I found some of the stories to be more compelling than others, but overall, I enjoyed this collection and reading stories from authors I had never heard from. If you would like a tour through Europe—with a slice of murder on the side—you might try Resorting to Murder.
*I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Regina
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The old grey donkey, Eeyore stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, "Why?" and sometimes he thought, "Wherefore?" and sometimes he thought, "Inasmuch as which?" and sometimes he didn't quite know what he was thinking about.
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