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Fiction » Mystery » Best Mystery Books of 2022

Blackstone Fell by Martin Edwards
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Blackstone Fell

by Martin Edwards

Blackstone Fell is by Martin Edwards, a leading expert on the ‘golden age’ of mystery writing, the period between the two world wars when escapism was the order of the day and reading a mystery book all about solving a clever puzzle. This book is written very much in that genre, even featuring a locked room mystery (though that’s not the main plot). Set mainly in Yorkshire, it does read like it was written in the 1930s and even has a ‘cluefinder’ at the end, a device popular during the golden age and alerted the reader to the clues they should have picked up on while reading the book. It’s the third book in a series featuring Rachel Savernake as the crime solver, Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall are the first two books in the series.

The book, according to the author

Blackstone Fell is the third in a series about a character called Rachel Savernake, who denies being a detective, but is within the tradition of the great detective in some ways. She’s got a sidekick, a Doctor Watson figure called Jacob, who is a journalist and very impetuous and naïve. He gets into a lot of difficult situations. Rachel is enigmatic and mysterious, and very ruthless too, it must be said. She’s a complex character.

What I’m trying to do in that series is to write books that feel as though they were written in the period. I do a lot of research to try to make sure that they have that authentic feel. They have a lot of golden age tropes, but I’m writing in the 21st century. These are not pastiches, they’re not an attempt to write Agatha Christie, they’re an attempt to do something different with those ideas about society, about human nature, about character. The settings are important, too. I’m trying to take those ideas and use the freedom that writers have today—which is a different sort of freedom from writers of the 20s and 30s—to write stories that are a bit quirky, a bit different but which, nevertheless, fall broadly within that great tradition. They are quite dark, but they’re also meant to be fun and entertaining, and to offer a genuine mystery to be solved. So with this book, Blackstone Fell, and the last one, Mortmain Hall, there’s a cluefinder at the end, which is something that some of the books of the 20s and 30s used to have. The author puts clues at the end of the book that the reader may or may not have picked up in the text. You’re demonstrating that you’ve played fair, which was very important in the golden age.

The Best Golden Age Mysteries

Other books by Martin Edwards

Gallows Court by Martin Edwards

Gallows Court
by Martin Edwards

The Coffin Trail by Martin Edwards

The Coffin Trail
by Martin Edwards

All the Lonely People by Martin Edwards

All the Lonely People
by Martin Edwards

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books by Martin Edwards

The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books
by Martin Edwards

The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

The Golden Age of Murder
by Martin Edwards

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators by Martin Edwards

The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators
by Martin Edwards

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