There will be something to please most readers of mystery short stories in this collection of 22 from members of the CWA. It comes with an Introduction by Martin Edwards, Writer Biographies and a list of Sources, all of which were most useful.

I admit to finding the earlier tales more interesting, but that is a matter of taste, and, perhaps, generation. The highlights came early on, from Michael Gilbert, Bill Knox and Celia Fremlin.

Recommended.

Thank you to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the digital review copy.

Vintage Crime is a thoroughly enjoyable collection of short murder mystery stories, from varied authors throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All of the stories were new to me and there weren’t any duds among them, which is really unusual for this type of anthology.

Each story gave a vivid sense of time and place and it was fun to start each new tale wondering where and when you’d end up. Particularly memorable stories were set in Beatles-era Liverpool, pre-war Egypt and foot-and-mouth afflicted rural England in 2001.

A recommended read.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

Thanks to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the ARC of this anthology in exchange for a fair and honest review.
One thing I enjoy about reading an anthology is I get to visit old friends and make some new friends as I read samples of their work. While I enjoyed most of the stories, there were 3 that I didn't enjoy very much. But, with this book there is something for everyone and reading some of the vintage stories was a real treat. I highly recommend this for crime fans!

A nice mixed bag of stories - not overly long - from some well-known and not so well-known names in crime fiction. We have stories covering practical jokes gone awry, sleepwalking, dreams, espionage, love and betrayal, greed and jealousy, accidental death and out-and-out murder. Quite a few have that twist at the end that readers will enjoy, and not all our protagonists are deserving of our empathy. With some distinctive noirish tones, I enjoyed all twenty-two stories, and appreciated the mini author biographies at the end. Martin Edwards does it again - collating a diverse range of tales for this murderous anthology.

An intriguing selection of varied murder mysteries published years ago that I would not have come across were it not for this book. A nice collection of the clever and confounding.

This is a good anthology with a selection of mainly vintage detective and crime stories of various genres all of which had the reader guessing but none of which had especially gruesome details. As with all anthologies, there were some I did not really enjoy, but that was only two out of the 22 stories. All in all, it was a very good read.

With thanks to the publisher and to Netgalley for giving me a copy of the anthology in exchange for this honest review.

Fabulous collection that has keep me in shivers and nervous looks for the past few days. A real treat. There is something in this collection for everyone

This is a very appealing collection of stories.
The time frame covered is from the golden age to more contemporary.
All in all this was a delight to read.
I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy of this book.

There is no good reason why I shouldn’t like this CWA collection of short stories, Vintage Crime, edited by Martin Edwards. I am a fan of many of the authors, Mr. Edwards also presents the British Crime Classics series which has been absolutely wonderful, and I’ve enjoyed many other anthologies in the past. But somehow, this collection doesn’t do it for me.

We do have a large selection of stories: a murder victim who was pretending to have a stroke, blackmailing photographer who caught something more than he bargained for, woman who’s convinced someone’s using her apartment when she’s away, a sleepwalking woman who might have murdered her neighbor, an ignored wife who repeatedly attempts suicide, a meticulous planner who needs to kill his step-daughter, an annoying British author hounding an Indian police detective, an old detective telling a tale to his rookie partner about line-ups, a spurned lover in a small village with a secret, a clueless lady writing about a photographer who has seen too much, a woman away for the weekend running into an old flame, an interesting take on solving the murder of a homeless man, a Christmas family gathering that exposes a secret, an author being hounded by an old friend who suspects his guilt about the past, a woman getting revenge with rat poison, an old friend who leaves his wife and disappears forever, an artist whose last painting shows a murder, an elderly woman revisits her Egyptian past, a man suspects his wife and friend are cheating on him during a livestock outbreak in rural England, a young man witnessing a possible murder from the top deck of a bus, a cardinal who will stop at nothing to become pope, an agent who has to go too far in assuring the overthrow of the government.

So why wasn’t I thrilled? I guess even though the stories are all over the place, they all seem to be bleak and joyless. People killing, people cheating, mistaken identities, misdirection and misunderstandings, and most of the ending twists just leave you further depressed. I guess that’s the bottom line – for the most part, these stories left me sad and dejected.

I requested and received a free advanced electronic copy from Flame Tree Press via NetGalley. Thank you!

Short stories seem not so popular today yet are ideal for a number of occasions . All in this collection hold interest and have a suitable solution at the end making it a satisfying read..

The book, a collection of mystery/crime stories for me was in comparison to watching an old TV series. Many stories had a quality of intrigue and caught my interest trying to solve a mystery. I found many stories left you hanging.

I liked the book for the quick story line aspect, however this selection would not be one I would recommend to my colleagues in that genre.

As with all anthologies, there are some great stories which are old friends, some that will be new friends and some that turn out to remain acquaintances. I really enjoy these types of books as they give a taste of authors that one has not read before, and shows the width and breath of the genre and its interpretations

A vintage collection of short crime fiction stories, some have aged better than others. Not all will quench the thirst but definitely worth a tipple.

Many thanks to Flame Trees Press and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this volume of short stories from the Crime Writers Association it was excellent. Thanks should also go to Martin Edwards who edited this book and was able to get as many stories from authors past and present to contribute to the book. This book has given me an insight for other authors to follow when choosing books to read in the future.

This is a mixed bag of mysteries, written by past and present members of the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA). The stories cover more than half a century, from the 1940's to the present day. Only the 2nd anthology in the CWA's history (the first was "Butcher's Dozen : An Anthology", published in 1956) it comprises a total of 22 tales by writers famous and not so famous.
The earliest story is by the American author John Dickson Carr and features Colonel March of Scotland Yard's Department of Queer Complaints. This is a wonderfully weird mystery which involves Colonel March (made famous by ‎Boris Karloff‎; in the 1950's TV series Colonel March of Scotland Yard) solving the identity of exactly who made some footprints in the snow. There's humour from Simon Brett in the form of "The Nuggy Bar" which mixes murder with the launch of a snack of that name. One of my favourite new authors, Mick Herron (author of the "Slow Horses" series) contributes the thriller based "All She Wrote", while Michael Z. Lewin has a character called Rover solving a murder mystery.
It's very difficult not to give anything away when reviewing short stories, so I'll end this review by saying that some of the stories worked for me and some didn't. That said, it's worth reading, if only to see how crime writing has developed over the past 75 years.
Another plus was that it made me want to find out more about some of the authors whose works I haven't yet read.
My thanks to Flame Tree Publishing and to NetGalley for a copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.

I’m the first person reviewing this book on GR and I really do wish I had nicer things to say about it. Or not even that…nice isn’t the problem here. It’s all very nice. British nice, in fact. Every author featured in this collection is British by birth of choice. But niceness isn’t the quality I look for in my crime fiction. Quite the opposite, in fact, Give me some demented dark psychological nightmares to machete through. These are more along the lines of mild brainteasers to gently untangle. Not even that challenging, really, sometimes the twist endings are just so…slight. So I don’t know, this will probably work for some readers, I’m sure of it. Readers who like the golden age mysteries, or cozies, or those easily offended or scared or disturbed. And the writing is uniformly decent throughout. So the quality is there. It’s just about the degree of excitement this might inspire…how thrilling you want your mystery thrillers to be. Maybe this is entirely my fault for not estimating accurately my reading mood. Maybe some vintages don’t age like the others. And mind you, the stories in this book are not all old they range from 1940s to 1990s or so, it’s just they all have that same quality of old timey mysteries. Some of the stories were pretty good, but none really wowed somehow. In fact, it is somewhat telling that the only story that actually engaged was told from a quadrupedal perspective. Maybe this was more of a collection to dip in and out of instead of reading the entire thing. Not sure. It didn’t read especially quickly. Just can’t help thinking that if this book were to become a person, it would have been someone best described as milquetoast. But seriously, don’t let one reader’s somewhat extreme tastes in genre literature discourage you from checking out some old fashioned vintage mysteries. By all means. The cover is great too. Thanks Netgalley.