Reviving the iconic green Penguin Crime paperbacks, first published 75 years ago, this new series celebrates the endless variety and unique appeal of one of fiction’s great genres. The series, which continues to grow, is a careful selection of the very best from Penguin Classics’ extensive archives, combined with new discoveries unearthed from the golden age of crime and well overdue a new readership. The first tranche of titles, released in Summer 2023, took us from a sunshine soaked, yet bullet ridden California to a macabre Tokyo flat. Now the second tranche is here to take us through to Autumn with the best fireside reading for armchair detectives.
The series is carefully curated by author and Penguin Press publishing director Simon Winder, who is available for publicity: “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.”
‘I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room’
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler
The Big Sleep & Farewell, My Lovely | Raymond Chandler | 1939 & 1940
There are no streets meaner than those of L.A.'s underworld - but luckily one detective has more than his fair share of street smarts. Here, in the first two novels featuring the immortal creation Philip Marlowe, we see the cynical sleuth taking on a nasty case of blackmail involving a Californian millionaire and his two devil-may-care daughters; then dealing with a missing nightclub crooner (plus several gangsters with a habit of shooting first and talking later).
Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 but moved to England with his family when he was twelve. During the Depression era, he seriously turned his hand to writing, and his first published story appeared in the pulp magazine Black Mask in 1933, followed six years later by his first novel, The Big Sleep.
Game Without Rules | Michael Gilbert | 1967
In a peaceful Kent village, Mr Behrens lives with his aunt at the Old Rectory, where he plays chess and keeps bees. His friend Mr Calder lives nearby with Rasselas, a golden deerhound of unnatural intelligence. No one would suspect that they are in fact working for British Intelligence, carrying out the jobs that are too dangerous for anyone else to handle - whether it's wiping out traitors, Soviet spies or old Nazis - in these gloriously entertaining stories.
Michael Gilbert was born in Lincolnshire in 1912. He worked as a lawyer and wrote his novels exclusively when commuting by train, 500 words a day in 50-minute stints. He was made a CBE in 1980, awarded a Diamond Dagger for the Crime Writers Association for lifetime achievement, and named a 'grandmaster' by the Mystery Writers of America in 1988.
Maigret’s Revolver | Georges Simenon | 1952
Inspector Maigret receives a call from his wife to say he has a visitor at their apartment. But when he gets home, the young man has already gone, along with Maigret's prized Smith and Wesson .45. The trail to find the culprit - and the woman who may become his victim - takes Maigret across Paris and all the way to the Savoy Hotel in London. But getting to the truth may be even more complicated than he had first imagined.
Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
Sleeping Dog | Dick Lochte | 1985
Leo Bloodworth, 'the Bloodhound', is a world-weary L.A. gumshoe with a reputation for finding anything - and a low tolerance of precocious teenagers. Serendipity Dahlquist is a precocious teenager. When the headstrong, roller-skating fourteen-year-old asks Bloodworth to help track down her lost dog Groucho, it leads this oddest of odd couples into the dark criminal underworld of the Mexican mafia, and into more trouble than they'd bargained for.
Dick Lochte's first novel, Sleeping Dog was published to enormous acclaim. He was a columnist for the Los Angeles Times for several decades, and formerly president of both the American Crime Writers League and the Private Eye Writers of America. Born in New Orleans, Lochte now lives on the West Coast.
Brat Farrar | Josephine Tey | 1949
Twenty-one-year-old Brat Farrar is an orphan, alone in the world without friends or family. So when he is offered the unexpected chance to impersonate Patrick Ashby, the long-lost heir to a vast fortune on a country estate, he agrees. Brat is the spitting image of Patrick, who disappeared years ago. At first it seems Brat can pull off this incredible deception, until he starts to realise that he is in far greater peril than he ever imagined.
Josephine Tey began to write full-time after the successful publication of her first novel, The Man in the Queue (1929), which introduced Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard. It wasn't until after the Second World War that the majority of her crime novels were published. Born in Inverness, Tey died in 1952, leaving her entire estate to the National Trust.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy | John le Carré | 1974
George Smiley, formerly of the Secret Intelligence Service, is contemplating his new life in retirement when he is called back on an unexpected mission. His task is to hunt down an agent implanted by Moscow Central at the very heart of the Circus - one who has been buried deep there for years. The dogged, troubled Smiley can discount nobody from being the traitor, even if it is one of those closest to him.
John le Carré was born in 1931. For six decades, he wrote novels that came to define our age. After a peripatetic childhood, a spell of teaching at Eton led him to a short career in British Intelligence (MI5&6), during which he published his first novel. He gained a worldwide reputation for his subsequent books. Le Carré died in December 2020.
The Black Lizard | Edogawa Rampo | 1934
They call her the 'Dark Angel'. Queen of Tokyo's underworld, Mme Midorikawa is famed for her beauty, her jewels and the tattoo of a black lizard on her arm. Crime is so easy for her that she warns her victims in advance. When a wealthy jewel merchant receives letters saying his precious daughter Sanae is about to be kidnapped, he entrusts the renowned detective Akechi Kogoro to protect her. But he may have met his deadliest adversary yet...
Edogawa Rampo was the pseudonym of Taro Hirai, generally viewed as the greatest of all Japanese suspense and mystery authors. He was a prolific novelist and short story writer. Much influenced by writers such as Conan Doyle, Chesterton and Wells, his pseudonym is a Japanese transliteration of Edgar Allen Poe's name. Many of his works have been made into films.
Payment Deferred | C.S. Forester | 1940
Bank clerk William Marble is facing financial ruin - until a visit from a wealthy young relative, a bottle of Cyanide and a shovel offer him an unexpected solution. But there is no such thing as the perfect murder. Gradually Marble becomes poisoned by guilt and fear, and his entire family corrupted. Sooner or later his deed will catch up with him, as events spiral out of control in the most unpredictable of ways...
C. S. Forester was born in 1899 in Cairo, where his father was a government official. On the outbreak of the Second World War, he entered the Ministry of Information. As well as the famous Horatio Hornblower series, his novels include The African Queen, adapted into the famous film, and crime novels Plain Murder and The Pursued.
The Mask of Dimitrios | Eric Ambler | 1939
English writer Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when a police inspector tells him about the infamous master criminal Dimitrios, long wanted by the law, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Immediately fascinated, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios' steps across Europe to gather material for a new book, but instead finds himself descending into a terrifying underworld of international espionage, Balkan drug dealers, unscrupulous businessmen and fatal treachery - one he may not be able to escape.
Eric Ambler was born in London. He studied engineering but left college and became a copywriter in the advertising industry, before publishing his great spy thrillers and working as a screenwriter. His profound influence on the espionage genre has been acknowledged by writers including Ian Fleming and John le Carré.
Other Paths to Glory | Anthony Price | 1974
Paul Mitchell is a young military historian whose life is changed forever when two men, Dr Audley and Colonel Butler of the MOD, visit him with a fragment of a German trench map - and a lot of questions. Then somebody tries to kill him. Paul, his life now in danger, agrees to go underground on a mission to solve a dangerous mystery: what really happened during the battle of the Somme in 1916? And why does somebody want to keep it secret?
Anthony Price was born in Hertfordshire. He began as a crime reviewer on the Oxford Mail and ending as editor of the Oxford Times. He won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger for his first novel The Labyrinth Makers, and the Gold Dagger for Other Paths to Glory, which was later shortlisted for the Dagger of Daggers Award for the best crime novel of the last 50 years.
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