Capital Crimes is one of the British Library's magnificent crime classics, edited by Martin Edwards, who oversees the entire series. What we have here are Golden Age short stories which share a London location. They range from Conan Doyle ('The Case of Lady Sannox', which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog) to Anthony Gilbert ('You Can't Hang Twice'). Some are naturally better than others but for once there are no duds. My favourite is 'The Hands of Mr Ottermole' by Thomas Burke, 'the laureate of London's Chinatown' apparently, and definitely a breath of fresh air as a working class writer, and 'Cheese', an offbeat item from Ethel Lina White, author of what became Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.
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