I hadn’t heard of the “British Library Crime Classics” until I found John Bude‘s book, The Cornish Coast Murder, last year. I liked it a lot and just read another fun one by him, The Lake District Murder, which I also enjoyed very much. Now I’m excited to read as many of these fun classic mysteries, by John Bude and a number of other authors. The books in this series are considered the  “forgotten gems of the Golden Age of British crime writing,” according to the Globe and Mail.

Superintendent Meredith is the persistent and creative problem-solver of the Lake District Murder. He is a hard-working and very thorough detective who follows up on every clue.

It was all very well to expound suppositions, but the cleverest supposition in the world was quite worthless in the eyes of the law, unless backed by proof. To reconstruct a crime was fairly simple but to prove the truth of that reconstruction was a task that called for tremendous patience, acute observation and the devil’s own amount of hard work!

By the time I finished the book, I felt as if I had solved the crime myself, detail by minute detail! And being the armchair detective that I am, (trained by Nancy Drew herself, and with skills honed by many hours of reading the books of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh!) I can’t wait to “solve” my next mystery by John Bude, and then move on to read all the other authors in this series. Lots of mystery and fun ahead for me!