Kenneth Martin Edwards (born 7 July 1955) is a British crime novelist, whose work has won multiple awards including lifetime achievement awards for his fiction, non-fiction, short fiction, and scholarship in the UK and the United States. In addition to translations into various European languages, his books have been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Taiwanese. As a crime fiction criticBritish Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, pp. 776–777. and historian, and also in his career as a solicitor, he has written non-fiction books and many articles. He is the current President of the Detection Club and in 2020 was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing, in recognition of the "sustained excellence" of his work in the genre.
Biography Martin Edwards was born in Knutsford and educated in Cheshire (at Sir John Deane's Grammar School, where one of his teachers was Robert Westall, who later became a successful children's author) and at Balliol College, where he took a first-class honours degree in jurisprudence in 1977. He qualified as a solicitor in 1980 and joined the firm of Mace & Jones, where he became a partner in 1984, and head of employment law in 1990, becoming chair of the employment law practice in 2011, when the firm merged with Weightmans LLP. After spending three years with Weightmans as a partner, he is now a consultant. In 1988, he married Helena Shanks and they have two children. He is well-known for his expertise on crime fiction and in other fields. He has taken part in Criminal Mastermind at two Bouchercon conventions, in 1990 and 1995, and at two CrimeFest conventions, in 2009 and 2010, winning on three occasions and finishing as runner-up once. In 2022, he captained the Balliol College team which became series champions in Christmas University Challenge 2022, the final series hosted by Jeremy Paxman.
Crime fiction “Martin Edwards has earned distinction in every area of the crime-fiction field", said Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in July 2016.p. 93, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2016. Four years later, the Crime Writers’ Association named him as the recipient of the Diamond Dagger in recognition of the sustained excellence of his work coupled with his significant contribution to crime writing published in the English language, and Ian Rankin said ‘His novels feature an acute sense of place as well as deep psychological insights.’
In his Rachel Savernake series, the stories feature Rachel Savernake and are set in the early 1930s. Lee Child described Gallows Court from this series as ‘Superb... the book Edwards was born to write’, and in 2019 the novel was longlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger and shortlisted for the eDunnit award for best hardback and ebook crime novel of the year. In December 2023, Martin Edwards was voted Best Newcomer for the Japanese translation of Gallows Court by a panel of 51 experts for Hayakawa Mystery Magazine.Hayakawa Mystery Magazine, December 2023 Blackstone Fell was longlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2023, while Sepulchre Street and Hemlock Bay were both shortlisted for the eDunnit award for best crime novel in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
His first novel, All the Lonely People, introduced Liverpool lawyer Harry DevlinBritish Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, p. 696. and was published in 1991, earning a nomination for the John Creasey Memorial Dagger for best first crime novel of the year.Great British Fictional Detectives, p. 86.The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction, p. 148. In 2012 the book was republished by Arcturus in its series of Crime Classics, while Yesterday's Papers was reissued as an Arcturus Crime Classic in 2013. The book featured in Cambridge University Library’s Murder by the Book Exhibition in 2024 as one of the one hundred landmark titles in British detective fiction: ‘As both novelist and historian, Edward’s contribution to crime fiction is immense…His Harry Devlin series broke boundaries in its portrayal of a Liverpool lawyer in the early 1990s. Each book carries the authority of his own legal background and a deep compassion for its subjects.’ To date, Edwards has written eight novels about Devlin; the most recent is Waterloo Sunset.
The Coffin Trail was the first of eight books set in the Lake DistrictBritish Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, p. 704. (The Lake District Mysteries) featuring Detective Chief Inspector Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind; it was short-listed for the Theakston's Old Peculier Award for best crime novel of 2006. The Arsenic Labyrinth was short-listed for the Lakeland Book of the Year Award in 2008. Edwards has also published a stand-alone novel of psychological suspense, Take My Breath Away, and completed The Lazarus Widow by the late Bill Knox.The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Modern Crime Fiction, p. 149.In 2016, he was commissioned by the British Library to write an additional solution to Anthony Berkeley’s The Poisoned Chocolates Case. 2008 also saw the publication of his first historical novel, Dancing for the Hangman, a fictional account of the life and misadventures of Hawley Harvey Crippen. Writing in Historical Noir, Barry Forshaw said it was “a book to make readers wish that the versatile Edwards might tackle the historical crime genre more often.”Historical Noir, p. 124. In 2025, he published a standalone puzzle mystery, Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife, which was shortlisted for the Cob and Pen award for best crime novel.
Edwards has written over 80 short stories, which have appeared in magazines and anthologies, and he has edited the Crime Writers' Association's annual crime anthology since 1996.British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, p. 25. In all, he has edited more than sixty anthologies, stories in which have won awards. His early stories were collected in Where Do You Find Your Ideas? and other stories, which had an introduction by Reginald Hill. Edwards won the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2008 with 'The Bookbinder's Apprentice' and has also been shortlisted three times for the same Dagger with 'Test Drive', 'Murder and its Motives' and 'Strangers in a Pub' in 2005, 2017, and 2019 respectively. In 2014, he was the first winner of the CWA Margery Allingham Prize for his story 'Acknowledgments.' In 2021 he was commissioned by Mysterious Bookshop of New York City to contribute to a series of limited edition Bibliomysteries; the result was The Traitor. In 2023, he received a further commission to write a Christmas story, ‘End Game’, for customers of the Mysterious Bookshop. In the same year, he became the second British writer, after Ruth Rendell, to be awarded the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award by the Short Mystery Fiction Society, in recognition of his lifetime achievement in the field of the short story.
In 2018, Edwards won the CWA Dagger in the Library, which recognises "a body of work by a crime writer that users of libraries particularly admire". He was a founder member of the Northern Chapter of the Crime Writers' Association and of the Murder Squad collective of crime writers. He became vice chair of the CWA in 2015 and chair in 2017. In 2007, Edwards was appointed archivist of the Crime Writers' Association, and in 2011 the CWA gave him a Red Herring Award in recognition of his services to the Association. In 2008, he was elected to membership of The Detection Club and in 2011 he was appointed its first archivist. Four years later in 2015, he became the eighth president of the club, succeeding Simon Brett. He is the only person to have held the offices of President of the Detection Club and Chair of the CWA at the same time. He was chair of the CWA from January 2017 to April 2019, making him the longest-serving chair since the CWA's founder, John Creasey.
In 2012, new ebook and print editions of the early Harry Devlin novels were published, including introductions by writers such as Val McDermid, Peter Lovesey, Andrew Taylor and Frances Fyfield. In her foreword to All the Lonely People, Fyfield said: "What distinguishes this book and those that follow and what makes them classics of a kind is this marvellous quality of compassion and the celebration of all that is heroic in the corrupted ordinary." In The Mammoth Encyclopaedia of Modern Crime Fiction, Mike Ashley noted that the author's legal knowledge "provides a solid reliability to the Devlin books, but their strength lies in the evocation of Liverpool both past and present". Similarly, Russell James noted in Great British Fictional Detectives that the Devlin books "are all solid and well-informed". In Scene of the Crime, Julian Earwaker and Kathleen Becker described the Devlin series as "a blend of classic detection and urban noir", and that "The bleaker tones of the early books...are superseded by the lighter tone and more complex plotting of the later novels." In Whodunit?, Rosemary Herbert said that "Edwards rapidly made a name for himself as a writer whose law expertise informs fiction set in a well-drawn Liverpool...Edwards' work as an anthologist is highly regarded." In Crime Scene: Britain and Ireland, John Martin said that Edwards has "written two superbly crafted series of crime novels...intricately plotted with subtle twists and turns."John Martin, Crime Scene: Britain and Ireland, Five Leaves Publications, 2014, p. 250. Douglas G. Greene, writing in the magazine CADS, described Edwards as "a major detective novelist who has combined Golden Age trickiness in plotting with modern darkness in the telling."Doug Greene, "The Golden Age of Murder", CADS 71, October 2015.
In Brit Noir, Barry Forshaw said: "He is one of the UK’s premier crime fiction anthologists, as well as being a noted expert on the Golden Age...Edwards' own two crime fiction series...have proved to be both critically and commercially successful...such books as Yesterday’s Papers offer both the diversions of crime fiction and scene-setting of a high order... The Dungeon House, the most recent in the Lake District series at the time of writing, sports Edwards' usual expertise."Brit Noir, p 75-6 In Crime Fiction: a Reader’s Guide, Forshaw said that Gallows Court ‘pays homage to the legacy of vintage thrillers but introduces an urgency and sense of dark menace that are notably contemporary…Evocative period detail, twist-packed plotting and a fascinatingly enigmatic anti-heroine’.Crime Fiction: a Reader’s Guide, p. 343.
In British Crime Writing: an encyclopaedia, Michael Jecks described him as 'a writer of imagination and flair' and as possessing 'a rare skill for acute description'.British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, p239 In the same volume, Philip Scowcroft praised Edwards' books set in the Lakes 'which he describes idiomatically and evocatively in a series of well-plotted mysteries'. Jecks summed him up as 'a crime writer's crime writer. His plotting is as subtle as any; his writing deft and fluid; his characterisation precise, and his descriptions of the locations give the reader the impression that they could almost walk along the land blindfolded. He brings them all to life.'British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, p. 240. Writing in The New York Times in December 2022, Sarah Weinman said: ‘Crime fiction is blessed to have Martin Edwards.
Writing about crime fiction