Who needs gritty, dark psychological horror when you can settle in your armchair and read a book about a kitten catching a killer?
Paula Hawkins might be breaking records this summer with The Girl on the Train, her disturbing look at murder and alcoholism, but not all lovers of crime fiction are looking for tales of blood and violence, with golden-age and “cosy” mystery writing currently undergoing a major renaissance.
Not only are reissues of golden-age crime writing taking off – last Christmas, Waterstones sold more than 50,000 copies of J Jefferson Farjeon’s 1937 country house murder story Mystery in White – but books by modern-day authors setting out to recreate the gentler side of mystery writing, as epitomised by Agatha Christie, are also flying out of bookstores. Publishers are rushing to bring “lost” golden-age authors such as Annie Haynes back into print, and to repackage the likes of Margery Allingham and Francis Durbridge.
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