Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel

Julian Symons's work has probably been as varied as that of any living writer. He made a reputation before the Second World War as editor of Twentieth Century Verse, a 'little' magazine which published most of the young poets outside the immediate Auden circle. After that he put his foot on what he calls the treadmill of murder by publishing a comic crime story, which he now regards as so bad that he won't allow it to be reprinted. Several crime stories later, he can look back on two, The Colour of Murder and The Progress of Crime, that have received awards as the best books of their year. He still keeps a toe in what he regards as the generally shallow waters of recent poetry, but also has a quite separate reputation as a biographer (of figures as diverse as Thomas Carlyle and Horatio Bottomley) and a social and military historian (he has written a full-length study of the 1926 General Strike and the only book about the expedition to relieve Gordon at Khartoum). Despite the diversity of his interests, he has never wavered in his enthusiasm and appetite for crime stories. Hence Bloody Murder, a study of the genre. His latest publications are The Players and the Game, The Plot Against Roger Rider and A Three Pipe Problem.