Books for Christmas – Martin Edwards

Established UK crime author Martin Edwards has recently started an interesting blog entitled "Do you write under your own name?" and is the subject of a recent buzz surrounding his novel The Cipher Garden.  Here’s his Christmas pick for 2007:

"In 2007 I caught up with a few hard-to-find older books, notably THE PRISONER and WHO WAS CLAIRE JALLU?, both by the French duo Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, as well as an extraordinary, and very enjoyable, new literary novel, THE AMNESIAC by Sam Taylor, who plays games with the detective genre and gets away with it through sheer exuberance. For those with a taste for Florida noir, CRUEL POETRY by Vicky Hendricks is a fast-paced erotic thriller, while in a very different vein, EVEN MURDERERS TAKE HOLIDAYS, a posthumous collection from Michael Gilbert, would appeal to any lover of the traditional, well-crafted short story. But the book which, for me, surpassed all others in sheer entertainment value was THE SECRET HANGMAN by Peter Lovesey. This is the latest novel featuring his Bath-based detective Peter Diamond, and I’m surprised it hasn’t attracted more attention. It is a serial murder story which boasts the most cleverly conceived – and concealed – murder motive I’ve come across in years. Lovesey is never less than highly readable, and here he is on the very top of his form. When a detective series has been running for more than a decade, it’s easy to fall into the trap of formula. But Lovesey, at the age of 70, is writing with as much freshness and verve as ever, and although he made his name with historical mysteries, nobody can now doubt his equal mastery of the contemporary crime novel. As a relaxing Christmas-time read, this book would be hard to beat."