I knew that it would be a mega-project, and by then I also knew that it would be a very, very different book from Bloody Murder. I was flattered, but a bit daunted.Īs things turned out, it wasn't until The Golden Age of Murder was published that I turned my mind in earnest to the idea of writing a history of the genre. The fact that, even in those far-off days, he thought I was capable of such a feat stuck in my mind.

Andrew is someone whose opinions I greatly respect. He said to me that I really should try to write a book that was in effect an update of Julian Symons' Bloody Murder, the study of the genre that he and I greatly admire. Then, in the mid-90s, I had a conversation with fellow author Andrew Taylor, during a St Hilda's crime fiction conference, which stuck in my mind. In the 1980s, I kept a card index detailing authors, books, and topics of interest, but other things got in the way and the index gathered dust. I've been interested in the idea of writing a history of the genre for a very long time. It's about a quarter of a million words long, even after ruthless (believe me!) cutting. It will land quite noisily, because the book is no slim volume. The sub-title is Unravelling the Mysteries of Fiction's Favourite Genre, and the book is due to land on the shelves on. I've been pleased by the reaction on social media to my big news - the announcement in the Bookseller of my forthcoming history of mystery, The Life of Crime, to be published by HarperCollins.

The life of crime martin edwards