Traditional crime authors still collected

In May this year I noticed that the books sold in the Scorpion Press series of signed limiteds were mainly by the stalwarts of crime writing.  The American James Lee Burke and Ruth Rendell and a lovely anthology.  One of my customers collects fine bindings and anthologies, having all the ones we issued except the very first one from 1992 which had a host of superb names in British crime writing.

Keating-The-Man-Who-titlep copy

The Man Who … was a specially commissioned collection of short stories edited by the late H R F Keating.  It was a book like no other in the sense that its contributors spanned half a century of crime writing.  Eric Ambler was famous for his pre-war spy thrillers and Len Deighton was famous for his Cold War spy fiction;  then you have Michael Gilbert who wrote just after the war with numerous whodunits, and again the 50s Michael Underwood gave us tricky legal cases; later in the 70s to the recent period Simon Brett, Peter Lovesey and Reginald Hill gave us some of the finest crime with irony and humour; Antonia Fraser, the historian is also a noted crime writer with a female detective. Then of course, we have the queens of crime – P D James and Ruth Rendell.  Harry Keating himself wrote a story.  They all paid homage to Julian Symons (author of many books with “The Man who… ” title).  It was a terrific collection in an exceptional alum tawned goat binding and special box.

Another customer picked out a Ruth Rendell and another his missing James Lee Burke’s.

 

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