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Twelve Tales of Murder is Jack Adrian's 1998 Oxford University Press anthology of classic British mystery short fiction, drawing twelve obscure pieces from the long-out-of-print British mystery shelf. The selection covers Edwardian to mid-twentieth-century work, with a deliberate focus on writers who never quite achieved the Christie / Sayers / Allingham mainstream recognition.
Adrian's editorial brief was archival: surface stories good enough to survive but too obscure to anthologize themselves. The collection delivers, with strong entries from H. C. Bailey, Anthony Berkeley, R. Austin Freeman, and Roy Vickers. A handful of pieces feel period-bound and have aged less well than the editor hoped. The volume is best read across several sittings rather than straight through.
Recommended for readers of classic British mystery (the British Library Crime Classics reprint series is the obvious modern cousin), for completists of the Adrian-edited Oxford anthologies, and for readers looking for books like Twelve Tales of Murder in the archival short-mystery tradition. Three stars and a useful obscure-corner sampler.
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