Recommendsday: British Library Crime Classics Summer 2025

It’s been a few months so I’m back again with some more from the British Library Crime Classics series that I’ve read. I’m starting to lose count of how many posts about BLCC books I’ve done now – whether it’s round up posts like this or Book of the Week ones, but I do rea a lot of them – thanks to their rotation in and out of Kindle Unlimited and the fact that they often pop up in the charity shop book selections at sensible prices. And so here we are again. And this has taken me way longer than I was expected because I kept ending up picking candidates for this as Books of the Week. I can’t help myself.

Murder as a Fine Art by Carol Carnac

Carol Carnac aka E C R Lorac is probably one of the best forgotten authors brought back to prominence through the BLCC series. Or at least she is in my opinion, so I try to grab her books as soon as I see them in KU. Murder as a Fine Art sees a Civil Servant crushed to death by a marble statue at the new Ministry of Fine Art. The minister in charge of the department already had some concerns about events in his department and now has to contemplate the fact that one of his staff may be a murderer. Inspector Julian Rivers is called in to investigate and try and work out what is going on. This has a clever murder but also work rivalries and grievances all mixed up with the world of fine art and modern art. It’s clever and readable.

Metropolitan Mysteries ed Martin Edwards

This is another of the short story collections from the BLCC and as the title suggests features mysteries set in London. I can sometimes find the collections a bit patchy – but this is one of the stronger ones with one proviso: because it’s got a lot of well known authors in it you may have come across some of these stories before. I had definitely read the Peter Wimsey short story before and the Allingham also seemed familiar. But if you haven’t read as much of Sayers or Allingham’s work as I have you may not have done and it’s lovely to come across familiar (and reliable) authors. And there’s one very clever if somewhat improbable mystery in here that I was completely bamboozled by and if I didn’t quite believe the solution was possible, it was so much fun I didn’t mind.

Murder in Vienna by E C R Lorac

Yes, I can’t deny it, this is the second book from the same author in this list, just under that other (main) pseudonym. This is one of her novels featuring Inspector MacDonald, but takes him away from the UK to Vienna, where he is taking a holiday and visiting an old friend Dr Nagler. Also on board the flight is Elizabeth Le Vendre, on her way to Vienna to take up her new role as secretary to a British diplomat, Sir Walter Vanbrugh. But in Vienna Elizabeth goes missing and there are a series of violent events – including murder – affecting Nagler and Vanbrugh’s connections and MacDonald finds himself investigating. This isn’t my favourite of Lorac’s books, but it is a fascinating picture of the turbulant post war situation in Vienna.

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!