Murder at the Beach

by Various

The holiday season is here, and for most of us, our minds are on carefree days in the sunshine. But for every trip to the seaside or sultry afternoon on the sunlounger, there's someone who's busy packing a suitcase full of secrets and a motive ... for murder.

Join ten of the best crime writers in history for the trip of a lifetime, as they puzzle, astound and delight you with these classic mysteries. Whether on the English coast or the blistering terraces of the Mediterranean, it's time to spread out the beach towel, put your feet up... but never forget to watch your back.

Featuring work by classic crime authors such as Dorothy L. Sayers, Cyril Hare, Margery Allingham, John Dickson Carr and others

Genres: Short Stories, Classics, Mystery

216 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2025

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.

Reviews

[Lora :) · Rating 1 out of 5]

There was no murder at the beach

[Helena · Rating 1 out of 5]

There were, in fact, no murders at the beach. If anything, there weren't any proper murder mystery short stories in the whole thing. I knew going into this that the bundles by Cecily Gayford aren't of the highest quality, but usually they're at least entertaining and true to their title. The only one worth reading here was The Man With The Twisted Thumb by Anthony Berkely.

[Laura Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories were good but the title of the book is completely misleading. I feel I was miss-sold it. There weren’t murders in most of the stories and no-one visited a beach in any of them.

[Rick Horlings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Er word letterlijk niemand vermoord op het strand

[Marjorie Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This didn't particularly stand out for me. I normally like short stories, and I normally like "cozy" mysteries. And I have enjoyed previous works by several of the authors who featured in this collection. So I expected to like this, but I didn't find any of the stories particularly captivating.

There may possibly be a mitigating factor, because I read this book electronically using BorrowBox, which is the (absolutely horrid) app that our library uses for "borrowed" books. So the physical act of reading it was a pain at times, which just made it harder to concentrate on the text, and hence on the writing. That may partly explain my lack of engagement with this book.

I'm going a bit off-topic now, so ignore the rest of this review if you don't use e-readers, and/or don't care about poor user experiences and/or don't care to listen to me digging bit deeper into the BorrowBox experience. But read on if you're curious how the reading vehicle I used may have affected my perception of this book.

Unlike the other common e-reading apps (Kindle, Apple books etc), in BorrowBox, by default, you get a header and footer with a few menu items on each page of the book. It's not easy to get rid of it: I click here and click there and eventually, often after a dozen or more clicks in all sorts of random places, it disappears. You need to get rid of it before reading, as it obscures the top and bottom of each page of text. Why? That's a bad piece of design in itself.

To make matters worse, unlike other common e-reading apps, there doesn't seem to be an option for continuous scroll. So you have to swipe from page to page to advance. So you have to get rid of the header and footer to read the text below it. If I could scroll up to read the text that was hidden, then I wouldn't care if the header and footer remained.

To make matters even worse, while I'm clicking around to get rid of the header and footer, I often end up advancing to the next page instead, sometimes repeatedly, or, even worse, closing the book completely, and having to reopen it. And as it often takes me several clicks before I'm successful, that's several irritating close/open or page forward/page back cycles. Then, to cap it all, sometimes, I inadvertently click somewhere while reading that reinstates the header and footer

I'm IT-literate, so if I can't easily work out how to get rid of the obstructive header and footer, and when I've managed it at last, can't work out exactly which magic spell achieved it, and also can't find any BorrowBox help to tell me the magic incantation required, then heaven help anyone else.

Unless someone here knows otherwise . . . ?

[James M · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read several of these collections - all winter-themed previously - and really enjoyed them.

This collection was also very enjoyable. My only gripe would be that for a collection of 10 short stories billed as “Murder at the Beach”, there are in fact only 4 murders in the book - 3 of which happen ‘before’ the story. The book should have really been called “Mysteries at the Beach” or some such, as they are really not murder mysteries - more are spy stories.

That little grumble aside, it was a well curated little batch of entertaining short stories, but not really linked by any great running theme (as is the case in the winter versions of these collections) - perhaps that’s just too hard for ‘summer’ theming? It does seem that the publisher came up with the idea and the editor then had a job on finding stories to match the bill.

I keep grumbling, but the stories themselves are good. Give them a read.

[Julia Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another interesting selection from Cecily Gayford's series. Bought chiefly for Anthony Berkeley's short story, which has a 50's Mary Stewart feel to it. Inevitably, some are weaker than others but overall a great read for the beach.

[Jeannette · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF I think that this is one of the worst book on Goodreads. Murder at the beach? No murder, lackluster short stories and no characters worth remembering. I should have read more reviews as no one really liked this book. On to something more interesting.

[Tijana C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐

[Marls · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5

[Michael Dodd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Probably 3.5 in truth. A fun, easy read - hit the spot, but is unquestionably light.

[Noor · Rating 2 out of 5]

niet mijn ding

[amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

very little beach, even less murder

[Serafina Schaller · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just wasn‘t my cup of tea I guess…Started reading maybe like 2 or 3 stories but couldn‘t continue…