Murder in the Falling Snow: Ten Classic Crime Stories (Vintage Murders)

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I also liked the Sayers story starring her lesser-known detective, commercial traveller Montague Egg, and the Sherlock Holmes story, though I'd read both of these before. My favourites in this were the Sherlock Holmes (which I've read many times), The Chopham Affair, and Haunted House, but my absolute favourite was The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel, which is very like The Signalman by Charles Dickens, a story that I love.

Off the Tile by Ianthe Jerrold - a good story that I came across in another anthology: Crimson Snow: Winter Mysteries. These are mainly set in the last century but I love the old fashioned settings, the way people spoke, the simplicity of life and the hardship of it before the health service, before the welfare state. In The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel by LT Meade and Robert Eustace, our narrator investigates the mysterious deaths of two signalmen on a remote section of the mountainous Welsh railway. I liked the vast majority of this collection and there are some authors in here that I will definitely read from again.I really enjoyed Mr Pontings Alibi by the latter, twistingly clever, designed to fox the reader and just great fun to read! Outstanding is The Chopham Affair by Edgar Wallace, in which a smooth-talking conman finally picks the wrong mark. I'll just repeat what I said from that review: in which a fall from a roof in November turns out to be more sinister than originally thought. I enjoyed some of these tales, but it seemed quite an uneven and random collection and not really very wintry at all. A pretty ragtag selection, all told, with only Conan Doyle’s ‘The Adventure of the Abbey Grange’ and Edgar Wallace’s sneakily structured ‘The Clapham Affair’ truly standing out.

Unbelievably, this is the seventh seasonal collection in this series of cosy crime short stories edited by Cecily Gayford.

JANICE HALLETT, THE SUNDAY TIMESIt's only the afternoon, but dusk is already falling and a log fire burning in the grate. By today's standards these stories are quaint but may be worth a read if you are interested in early detective fiction. The Chesterton was a bit boring and since most of the action was set in South America, seemed a weird inclusion. The seasonal murder book market is flooded and there’s a whiff of barrel scraping here but, despite that, some major authors are included. What you do get though is ten early to mid-twentieth century, male centric murder tales with a tenuous link to winter.