Acclaimed crime fiction expert and author Martin Edwards opens a Portico Library series on crime writing with a talk on his new book.

Martin Edwards introduces the first major history of crime fiction in fifty years, The Life of Crime: Detecting the History of Mysteries and their Creators. Martin traces the evolution of the genre from the eighteenth century to the present, offering brand-new perspective on the world’s most popular form of fiction.

This event will have live BSL interpretation.

Tickets can be booked here. £3 for the event or £30 for the book and talk.

Martin Edwards received the CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in UK crime writing, in 2020. He has been described by Otto Penzler as ‘the best living practitioner of the classic detective story’ and by the British Library as ‘the leading expert on classic crime’. He is the author of twenty-one novels, including Gallows Court and Mortmain Hall. His latest book is The Life of Crime, a history of the crime genre, and he also conceived and edited Howdunit, an award-winning masterclass in crime writing by members of the legendary Detection Club.

He has received the Edgar, Agatha, and Poirot awards, two H.R.F. Keating awards, two Macavity awards, the CWA Margery Allingham Short Story Prize, the CWA Short Story Dagger, and the CWA Dagger in the Library. He has been nominated for CWA Gold Daggers three times and once for the Historical Dagger; he has also been shortlisted for the Theakston’s Prize for best crime novel of the year for The Coffin Trail. As consultant to the British Library’s Crime Classics series, archivist for the CWA and Detection Club, and well-known blogger, he has been responsible for the rediscovery of many long-forgotten Golden Age authors and novels. A former chair of the CWA, he has since 2015 been President of the Detection Club. His novels include the Harry Devlin series (the first of which, All the Lonely People, was nominated for the CWA John Creasey Memorial Dagger) and the Lake District Mysteries. He has published nine non-fiction books and seventy short stories, and edited more than forty anthologies of crime writing which have yielded many award-winning stories.

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