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Crime on the Coast and No Flowers by Request collects two serial novels that the British Detection Club wrote as round-robin collaborations across multiple chapters, with each chapter handed off to a different writer. The first, Crime on the Coast, runs through John Dickson Carr, Valerie White, Laurence Meynell, Joan Fleming, Michael Cronin, and Elizabeth Ferrars. The second, No Flowers by Request, runs through Dorothy L. Sayers, E. C. R. Lorac, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Gilbert, and Christianna Brand.
The collaborative form has its limitations and its pleasures. The Crime on the Coast chapters do not entirely cohere as a single mystery, but the John Dickson Carr opening is some of his sharpest short atmospheric writing. The No Flowers by Request entries hold together more tightly, with the Sayers and Mitchell sections particularly strong.
Four stars. A serious historical curio of the Detection Club's collaborative-writing tradition. Recommended to readers of Golden Age British crime fiction.
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