Martin Edwards’ LIFE OF CRIME to Collins

Collins Crime Club has acquired World English language rights in a new book by Martin Edwards – the first major history of crime fiction in 50 years. The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators will publish in hardback in May 2022.

The book traces the evolution of the crime fiction genre from the 18th century to the present, offering a brand new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction.

Edwards said: “The Life of Crime is the result of a lifetime of reading and enjoying all types of crime fiction, old and new, from around the world. The book has been many years in the making and I’m thrilled to be working with David Brawn and his colleagues again after they did such a fantastic job with The Golden Age of Murder and Howdunit.”

Brawn added: “In what will surely be regarded as his magnum opus, Martin Edwards has thrown himself undaunted into the breadth and complexity of the genre to write an authoritative – and readable – study of its development and evolution. With crime fiction being read more widely than ever around the world, and with individual authors increasingly the subject of extensive academic study, his expert distillation of more than two centuries of extraordinary books and authors – from the tales of E T A Hoffmann to the novels of Patricia Cornwell – into one coherent history is an extraordinary feat and makes for compelling reading.”

For more info, see The Bookseller article here.