Books published by publisher Collins for the Crime Club

A special 100th anniversary edition of J.S. Fletcher’s best detective novel, recognised as one of the Golden Age’s earliest and most successful classic stories.An unidentified elderly gentleman is found bludgeoned to death in London’s Middle Temple, that enclave of justice between Fleet Street and the Thames. After due investigation the police conclude that it was merely a case of robbery. But Frank Spargo, a young journalist who senses a scoop, and Inspector Rathbury of New Scotland Yard, who doesn’t, soon unearth fresh clues and join forces to solve an intricate and intriguing mystery.Joseph Smith Fletcher was a British writer and fellow of the Royal Historical Society who had studied law before turning to journalism. Dubbed ‘the Dean of Mystery Writers’, his literary career spanned some 200 books, with the seminal The Middle Temple Murder acclaimed as one of the genre’s defining novels, popular on both sides of the Atlantic with readers, critics and US Presidents alike.This Detective Club classic is introduced by the detective fiction historian Nigel Moss, celebrating 100 years since the book’s first publication. It includes the bonus of Fletcher’s earlier short story ‘The Contents of the Coffin’, his precursor to the full-length The Middle Temple Murder.

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Club’s first short story anthology is based around a London detective club and includes three newly discovered tales unpublished for 100 years, plus a story bearing an uncanny resemblance to a Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story but written some seven years earlier.‘You will seek in vain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.

Action thriller by the classic adventure writer set in Iceland.The assignment begins with a simple errand – a parcel to deliver. But to Alan Stewart, standing on a deserted road in Iceland with a murdered man at his feet, it looks anything but simple. The desolate terrain is obstacle enough. But when Stewart realises he has been double-crossed and that the opposition is gaining ground, his simple mission seems impossible…

Twelve stories from the celebrated author of one of the most famous mystery classics ever written, Trent's Last Case.Philip Trent is an artist, a journalist, and an urbane unraveller of highly problematical crimes. Here the unshakable sleuth appears in twelve tales of misadventure, where the crimes that he investigates range from fraud and embezzlement to criminal assault and murder, yet they all succumb to his adept methods even if the criminal sometimes escapes.Trent Intervenes affirms Bentley's reputation as an author of the first rank and displays his ability to write equally well in the short story form.

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.

Some crooks have tried to snatch the plump son of a business tycoon, and have accidentally made off with his playmate instead. But they're not changing their plan: a payment is to be delivered to them or a small corpse is to be delivered to Inspector Ghote. But what kind of ransom can a mere tailor's boy demand? And, as something more unpleasant than just a ransom note arrives from the kidnappers, are the police helping keep the boy in one piece?

Whilst organizing a mock murder hunt for the village fete hosted by Sir George and Lady Stubbs, a feeling of dread settles on the famous crime novelist Adriane Oliver. Call it instinct, but it's a feeling she just can't explain ... or get away from.In desperation she summons her old friend, Hercule Poirot--and her instincts are soon proved correct when the "pretend" murder victim is discovered playing the scene for real, a rope wrapped tightly around her neck.But it's the great detective who first discovers that in murder hunts, whether mock or real, everyone is playing a part.

A middle-aged diplomat is accosted in an airport lounge and his identity stolen! Sir Stafford Nye's journey home from Malaya to London takes an unexpected twist in the passenger lounge at Frankfurt -- a young woman confides in him that someone is trying to kill her. Yet their paths are to cross again and again -- and each time the mystery woman is introduced as a different person. Equally at home in any guise in any society she draws Sir Stafford into a game of political intrigue more dangerous than he could possibly imagine. In an arena where no-one can be sure of anyone, Nye must do battle with a well-armed, well-financed, well-trained -- and invisible -- enemy!