Penguin Modern Crime Announcement

 Penguin Modern Classics

CRIME & ESPIONAGE

Published by Penguin Modern Classics | 13 July 2023 | Paperback £9.99

First published 75 years ago, the iconic green Penguin Crime paperbacks have long held a special space in every crime lovers heart and bookshelf, as CrimeTime puts it: “If the Golden Age of Crime has a colour, it’s bottle green. And, if it has a smell, it’s the caramel of old paper. Nothing sums up crime fiction between the ages of flappers and flares quite so well as the classic Penguin Crime editions.” As one of our most popular imprints, the Penguin Crime series encompassed stories from Agatha Christie to Dashiell Hammett, and everything in between, expanding the horizons of crime readers with thrilling new discoveries in a familiar, trusted, and instantly recognisable green jacket. 

This summer, Penguin Modern Classics are thrilled to be reviving this beloved collection with our new Crime and Espionage series, celebrating the endless variety and enduring appeal of one of fiction’s great genres. Combining a careful selection of the very best from Penguin Classics’ extensive archives, including John le Carre, Josephine Tey, and Chester Himes, with exciting forgotten treasures which are well overdue a rediscovery, such as Edogawa Rampo and Davis Grubb, the first tranche of ten titles takes us from a sunshine soaked, yet bullet ridden California to a macabre Tokyo flat, through English country estates to the streets of Harlem. Transporting the reader through time and space, these novels can be outrageously entertaining but also chilling, filled with the darkest politics, vices, and betrayals.

The series, which will be released in ten-book tranches and continue to grow, is carefully curated by author and Penguin Press publishing director Simon Winder,  A long-time editor at Penguin and reader of crime, the revival of Penguin Crime and Espionage has seen Simon dig deep into the archives, reading hundreds of books to determine which of our existing titles should make the list, and which titles, previously not published by Penguin, should have been included years ago:

“Penguin Modern Classics is one of the great publishers of crime and suspense fiction.  I thought it would be enjoyable to pick out some highlights, add some new titles and revive the wonderful green livery Penguin used to use for all its crime fiction. 

These books are united by atmosphere, anxiety, a strong sense of time and place, and an often appalling ingenuity, both on behalf of the authors and their characters.  They have also all aged very well, gaining an additional pleasure from shifts in manners, clothes, wisecracks, politics, murder weapons and potential alibis.

The novels were designed to be entertainments, albeit sometimes of a very dark kind, and they all plumb extremes.  Fear of fascism or communism; fear of the anonymous city or of a fetid swamp; fear of vast global conspiracies or of just one rather odd family member with a glint in his eye….”

For lifelong crime lovers, who will no doubt be as excited as we are for the return of the bottle-green jackets as well as the previously unpublished titles, to new readers unsure where to start with the formidable back catalogues of Georges Simenon, Eric Ambler, or Len Deighton, the Penguin Crime and Espionage series is a collection of gems showcasing the best of the Golden Age of Crime.