When Jeff Marks asked if I’d like to help in the observation of Crippen & Landru’s 30th anniversary, I was on board. All I had to do was review one of the books they had published in the last thirty years.
Here’s the background, according to Crippen & Landru’s website, https://bit.ly/4bPhXu7. Crippen & Landru was incorporated in 1994 by Douglas Greene. Greene retired in 2018 as Publisher, but continues as Senior Editor. Jeffrey Marks assumed the role of Publisher in that same year. Crippen & Landru is a small publisher of high-quality fiction collections.
One of those collections is Motives for Murder, A Celebration of Peter Lovesey on His 80th Birthday: Stories by the Detection Club for Peter Lovesey, edited by Martin Edwards. Lovesey turned eighty in 2016, and Edwards, in his first act as President of the Detection Club, wanted to put together a new collection of short stories to honor Lovesey. There was a tight deadline, and each contributor was asked for an original story and a short personal preamble to the story.
The Detection Club is a social network for crime writers. Started in 1930, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Agatha Christie all had lengthy terms as Club President. That’s part of Edwards’ informative background to the book.
Contributors were inspired by Lovesey, sometimes used his characters, and, a couple times, even used Lovesey’s name. That includes Andrew Taylor in “The False Inspector Lovesey”. I had a few favorite stories, naturally. Ann Cleeves’ “Dreaming of Rain and Peter Lovesey” features an ex-pat wife in Dubai, eager to meet the author when he made an appearance there. Catherine Aird’s “The Walrus and the Spy” is about a man from the Foreign Office prior to World War II, desperate to translate a coded message. Two Boy Scouts provide inspiration and answers. Sherlock Holmes is the detective in David Stuart Davies’ “The Adventure of the Marie Antoinette Necklace”, a story that includes A.J. Raffles, a character created by Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, E.W. Hornung. Kate Ellis, one of my favorite authors, contributed “The Mole Catcher’s Daughter”, a tribute to Lovesey’s Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray. Thackeray and his nephew take centerstage in this clever story. I also read a story by Michael Ridpath that sent me to find his first mystery featuring Icelandic police detective Magnus Jonson. The story is “The Super Recogniser of Vik”.
Peter Lovesey himself ended the book. Edwards asked him to provide memories of the Detection Club in the `1970s. His piece is called “Spies, Superheroes and Stolen Goods”. It’s a respectful, while gossipy, enjoyable glimpse into the past.
Happy Anniversary, Crippen & Landru. Here’s to another thirty years of excellent stories!
Motives for Murder, A Celebration of Peter Lovesey on His 80th Birthday: Stories by the Detection Club for Peter Lovesey, edited by Martin Edwards. Crippen & Landru, 2017.
FTC Full Disclosure – I downloaded a copy of the book for my Kindle.
As a subscriber, I get all the Crippen & Landru titles as they are published, and get a 20% discount on them. And, believe it or not, I have read EVERY one of their books from the beginning, without exception. They’ve published long-time favprotes pf mine, like Ed Hoch of course, as well as Peter Lovesey, Bill Pronzini, Brendan Dubois, Erle Stanley Gardner, Ed Gorman, Doug Allyn, John Dickson Carr, Margaret Maron, and Marcia Muller, but the Lost Classics series has brought back older authors like Christianna Brand and Anthony Berkeley, as well as introducing us to people like Joseph Commings. Even lesser titles are worth reading. For a person like me who reads short stories every day, their publications always brighten the day.
Congratulations on the Anniversary.
What a great summary, Jeff. Thank you!
Thank you, Lesa! Fascinating piece. I’ve read Lovesy and several of the others and I’m closer to Lovely’s age than I thought.
You’re welcome, Becky. Thank you!
I’ve read several of their books. They reprint stuff nobody else will touch, performing a heckuva service for myster fans.
You’re right, Glen. As you can tell from Jeff’s note, they have quite an interesting backlist.