To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Agatha Christie, still by common consent the doyenne of English Detective Fiction, a team of her most distinguished descendants have joined in a highly original tribute. Leading members of the British Crime Writers Association have responded with ingenuity and enthusiasm to the challenge of producing stories set in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction - between the world wars-and containing the essential ingredients of A CLASSIC ENGLISH CRIME.

In a detective story, murder is no respecter of persons or places; here the vicarage lawn is no safer than the rusting funicular overhanging the Bay of Naples. The locations range from country house to seaside hotel, from village fête to West End theatre - while the crimes themselves, no less varied, are as bizarre and cunning as anything Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple had to deal with: a hostess poisoned at her own sumptuous dinner table; the baffling disappearance of a golfing baronet at the 15th green; the corpse of a cabaret singer found in a trunk at a station on the Brighton line....