After reading The Long Arm of the Law last month, I wanted to try another anthology in the British Library Crime Classics series. So this time around I picked Capital Crimes; a collection of London based crime stories put together by Martin Edwards, which as usual begins with Edward’s brilliant and informative introduction!
Capital Crimes features a good mix of crime writers from the ‘Golden Age of Murder,’ and nine of the writers included in this anthology were members of London Detection Club. But different from what I expected, out of the seventeen stories not all are detective/ police tales – some stories are solely based on the crime (which I preferred more!), and they vary considerably in their quality.
Among the crime-oriented stories, The Silver Mask by Hugh Walpole was my favorite. Miss Sonia Herries, the story’s victim is a fifty-year-old spinster who lives alone with her servant. One night when she returns from a dinner party, there’s a handsome, young man at her doorstep begging for food. Although Miss Herries is reluctant at first, unfortunately for her, her maternal instinct kicks in and she opens her door to this stranger. Taking advantage of her kindness he later introduces his family to her, and before she knows it, in this bone-chilling story, slowly but steadily they take over her life and possessions!
This anthology also includes a story by E. M. Delafield, the author of the semi-autobiographical novel The Diary of a Provincial Lady. Delafield had been a fan of true crime, and They Don’t Wear Labels resembles one feature of the Thompson-Bywaters case. In They Don’t Wear Labels there’s a woman who seems to be suffering from severe anxiety problems. Mr. Fuller, her husband when moving in tells Mrs. Peverelli, their new landlady that because of Mrs. Fuller’s condition they have to frequently move around. And Mr. Fuller instantly wins the admiration of the women in Mrs. Peverelli’s boarding house for being such a saintly husband to his ill wife – making her food and taking them to her among other things. So Mrs. Peverelli doesn’t take kindly to Mrs. Fuller accusing Mr. Fuller of trying to kill her. Mrs. Fuller says her husband has been moving them around so she won’t make any friends who would see what’s going on, and put an end to it. But surely only a deviant wife can make such vile accusations towards an attentive husband like Mr. Fuller, the women in Mrs. Peverelli’s house agree, and the story ends with Delafield hinting at how deceptive appearances can be!
Reading Capital Crimes was a good way to spend this bitterly cold weekend, however, this collection is not a personal favorite of mine in British Library Crime Classics series. But there are more anthologies (eight by my calculations) put together by Martin Edwards, so I definitely have more books to look for this year!
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