English Country House Murders: Classic Crime Fiction of Britain's Upper Crust [Hardcover]

Thomas Godfrey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1988

Nothing could seem more civilized, more orderly and sedate than a weekend at one of Great Britain's country estates. Yet these staid, conservative houses play host to a wider variety of murders than do the mean streets of America's darkest cities.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 348 pages
• Publisher: Mysterious Pr; First Edition edition (December 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0892963557
• ISBN-13: 978-0892963553
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Twenty-Two Tales Of Perfidious Albion*, July 20, 2000

By 

Loren D. Morrison "amateur_reviewer" (Los Angeles County, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: English Country House Murders: Classic Crime Fiction of Britain's Upper Crust (Hardcover)

* Perfidious Albion: One of the expressions Napoleon used when referring to England. Loosely translated it means "Treacherous England.

This is an anthology of twenty-two English Country House Mysteries. Godfrey begins his book by defining what constitutes an English Country House Mystery. There are rules for everything, you know! He then proceeds to entertain us with the twenty-two selected examples which are, if not the cream of the crop, right up there with the best of them.

As for his rules, some of them are delightful. To wit:

An English Country House Mystery must take place in an English Country House.

To be self respecting, an English Country House Mystery must include a crime.

The nature of the crime must be puzzling. The identity of the perpetrator must be kept unknown for a long time.

The deduction of the identity must involve genuine reasoning ability.

These are but a few of the rules that Godfrey sets forth. These mysteries, to qualify, must truly be British, preferably upper class British.

Having defined the rules of the genre, he goes on to the works of several of the pioneers in the field and of some next generation disciples. It seems that many of Agatha Christie's stories and novels meet the requirements. In this book, we are treated to her "The Shadow on the Glass." Works by such diverse authors as G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, and P. G. Wodehouse are also included. Wodehouse and his Jeeves remind me of another rule. There should generally be live-in staff, such as a butler, in these mysteries.

I don't think that any anthology on this subject would be complete without one of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes adventures. "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange" is the Holmes selection for this anthology.

They're all good, and it's almost unrealistic to pick a favorite story. That said, I particularly enjoyed Robert Barr's "Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune," which did violate one of the rules. It was a puzzle without a crime. Barr's detective, Valmont, was the prototype of the early British fictional detective, and he had a sense of humor. Many people believe that Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot was modeled on Valmont. Barr was one of the first writers to mix fictional characters with real life people in his stories. In this case, it was Thomas Alva Edison. A piece of advice Valmont had once received from Edison had become a centerpiece of Valmont's approach to solving crimes.

One of the beauties of ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS, or any good anthology for that matter, is that it serves as a sort of a tour. On a tour, you get a little sampling of a lot of places. The intelligent traveler than uses this information to choose places that he wants to revisit, seeing much more of what the place has to offer. This anthology serves exactly the same purpose. The reader is likely to discover new (to him, at least) authors, whose fiction he likes and whose greater body of works seem worth exploring. It's also fun to revisit authors with whom one is already familiar.

ENGLISH COUNTRY HOUSE MURDERS did both for me. I found a few previously unknown authors who interested me, and I was able to revisit some old friends such as Sherlock Holmes. Other readers will probably have similar experiences.

3.0 out of 5 stars An average collection, April 15, 2002

By 

Karina A. Suarez "Karina A. Fogliani-Ahmed" (Walt Disney World, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: English Country House Murders (Paperback)

On thinking about relaxation with a good book after a copious dinner, I once picked up this anthology expecting to be thoroughly entertained for hours on end beside a log fire on winter nights; my cup of hot cocoa and some good mints close at hand. But for what it's worth, sometimes I ended up quite satisfied, others completely bored, and only once saying "Wow! That is some story!" This happened when I finished reading "The Queen's Square", by Dorothy L. Sayers. In this story, taken from "Lord Peter's stories", Sayers pushes our brains to the limit with countless metaphors allusive to the game of chess and a story settled in a masquerade ball, site plan and all.

I was also very pleasantly surprised by Baroness Orczy's story, "The Fordwych Castle mystery", where we encounter one of the first women police constables. Incredibly smart too. Another non-British writer I've always wanted to explore but never really got to is the New Zealander Ngaio Marsh. Her Inspector Alleyn shows all the charm and informality of the typical Australian and he is a pleasure to read. The heavy Gothic style reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe is ever present in stories such as "The doom of the Darnaways", where Father Brown shows his wits in elucidating an old family curse. More Gothic in Ethel Lina White's "An unlocked window", where the murderer is present from the very beginning.

A small detail seems to have escaped the editor, Mr. Godfrey, when suggesting a title for this anthology, which should have been called "English Country House Mysteries", instead of murders, since at least two stories contain no murders at all. One of this is the long and tedious "A marriage tragedy", by Wilkie Collins. The longest story in the book, and one this anthology could have done without. I found this volume a good source to get to know the good authors of the mystery genre, but nevertheless, sometimes it even fails to present a good product of their talent as well. Take for instance, the all too insignificant story by Margery Allingham, "The same to us." I would think no one would probably ever bother to read her in the future if they judged her by this contribution here, and she is so good!

As an introduction, Mr. Godfrey spells out certain "rules" of what he considers an English country house mystery. Not to all of them I subscribe, and they are too long for enumarating here; and even this introduction fails to make the book interesting. In any way, for the "real thing" get a good novel of the big names in mystery for those chilly nights.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars some good, some fair, some poor, January 3, 2006

By 

jrc "jc001" - See all my reviews

This review is from: English Country House Murders: Classic Crime Fiction of Britain's Upper Crust (Hardcover)

The good stories are by Doyle, Barr, Allingham, White, Macdonald, Brand, Rendell, and James; the fair stories are by Crofts, Carr, Hare, and Miles. The rest neither challenge nor entertain.