Maxim Jakubowski, Anne Perry, Val McDermid, Marilyn Todd, Christopher Fowler, Keith Miles, John Mortimer, Judith Cutler, Peter Lovesey, Barbara Cleverly, John Connolly,Peter Tremayne, Ken Bruen, H. R. F. Keating, John Harvey, Kim Newman, Adrian Magson, Amy Myers, Peter Turnbull, Alanna Knight, Robert Barnard, Ian Morson, Michael Z. Lewin, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Margaret Murphy, Gillian Linscott, Mark Billingham, Jake Arnott, Martin Edwards, Peter Robinson
The Best British Mysteries III
© 2006
Introduction
Welcome to the third instalment in our annual collection regrouping the best mystery short stories penned by British authors during the course of the preceding calendar year. Yet again, it has proven a sterling twelve months with an embarrassment of riches to be found in magazines, books, radio and other sometimes unlikely places. Evidence renewed that in Britain crime still does pay, in subtle if metaphorical and fictional ways!
It has also been a year when historical crime fiction has proven increasingly popular with a score of excellent anthologies published in Britain and the USA set in the past, together with a bunch of most ingenious new Sherlock Holmes tales commissioned by BBC Radio and later made available on their website (bbc.co.uk), of which three have made the cut and are offered for the first time in book form here; all three have amusingly been authored by writers whose roots lie more in the horror or science fiction field but who have all mastered the mystery genre and its often attendant ironies with particular bravura.
We have tales of dastardly deeds, ingenious puzzles and bloodthirsty murder and intrigue by authors famous for their bounty of past awards as well as newer talents now making a name for themselves in our field.