I bought this because I am a fan of the Golden Age of Mystery and I like true crime and this book fits into both these categories – it’s a collection of true crime stories written by authors from the Golden Age of Mystery. While Agatha Christie is not in this book, unlike Ask a Policeman where she wrote an introduction, there is a pretty cool collection of authors, including Dorothy Sayers and Margaret Cole (though I have to admit that I’ve only read Sayers).

There are seven cases in this book, namely:

• The Death of Henry Kinder by Helen Simpson
• The Constant Kent case by John Rhode
• The Case of Adelaide Bartlett by Margaret Cole
• The Landru Case by E.R. Pushon
• The Murder of Julia Wallace by Dorothy Sayers
• The Rattenbury Case by Frances Iles
• The Lakey Murders by Freeman Wills Crofts

I’ve actually read this in 2017, but I still enjoyed all of these cases. They were all fascinating, but four in particular stood out. Two of these for the way they were recapped, and two for the case itself.

Out of the two cases that stood out because of the way it was covered, one was The Case of Adelaide Bartlett by Margaret Cole, which manages to mix in a critique of the courts and a discussion on the nature of justice into the recounting and evaluation of the case. The other was The Rattenbury Case, which stood out for slightly less positive reasons: in it, Iles manages to talk about how a love affair between a young man and a much older woman might be a good thing, without considering the power imbalance (unless he didn’t consider women to have power?) while simultaneously pretty much calling Mrs Rattenbury a self-serving woman who only wanted attention.

As for the two cases that stood out because they were fascinating, one was the Landru serial murders, which concisely summarised how one might, through a series of weak coincidences, build up a case that a charming man might actually be a serial killer who preyed on women. The other was The Lakey Murders, which showed how the perfect murder almost came to be and how it was foiled.

Overall, I enjoyed it and I have absolutely no regrets that I bought this. I’ve still got a bit more of the Golden Age authors to read up on, though, before I feel up to re-tackling another one of the Detection Club’s works.