I’ve recently had the thrill of curating Murder by the Book, an exhibition of crime fiction at Cambridge University Library. The Library holds a stunning collection of rare crime novels across the genre, most in their original dust jackets.
Treasures on show include a first edition of The Moonstone displayed alongside Wilkie Collins’s writing desk; scarce early novels by Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, Colin Dexter and Ruth Rendell; delightful letters between P.D. James and Faber, written before the publication of her first novel, Cover Her Face; and a celebration of Agatha Christie, with first editions of iconic novels and many more personal items, generously loaned by the Christie Archive. This includes notebooks, Christie’s typewriter, her dictaphone and the manuscript of the final Poirot novel, Curtain, locked away in a bank vault for thirty years.
One book that people might be surprised to see in the exhibition is Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, which has avoided all genre classifications in its 86-year history – but for me, Rebecca has the heart and soul of a crime novel. Not even Hitchcock could improve on du Maurier’s flawless handling of suspense, and the shift in our understanding towards the end of the book is one of the most emotionally credible and deftly handled twists in all fiction.
Mandy Morton and I will be talking about this much-loved story at the Felixstowe Book Festival this year, going behind the scenes of the famous film and revealing the book’s origins, which inspired my latest novel, Shot With Crimson, and which have their own surprising twist…
Murder by the Book runs at Cambridge University Library until 24 August; tickets are free, and can be booked at https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/murderbythebook
