The British Library Crime Classics have acquired an excellent reputation in the last couple of years with a beautifully produced series of Golden Age novels and anthologies, for which the indefatigable Martin Edwards (the current President of the U.K.’s Detection Club) is the principal consultant/editor. Their latest publication is Miraculous Mysteries, an anthology of sixteen impossible crime/locked room short stories by such luminaries as Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham alongside hidden gems by less familiar writers, spanning over half a century. There couldn’t be a better introduction to the genre.
I owe my own debt of gratitude to Martin (a top-rate mystery writer himself and the author of the multiple award-winning The Golden Age of Murder about the aforementioned Detective Club). When he learned that I had unearthed the rights to Death in the Dark, the rarest locked room mystery of them all, he graciously agreed to write the Introduction and gave his enthusiastic support during its turbulent publication (more of that another time). He is indeed a gentleman and a scholar.