One of the most iconic of German Crime Fiction series is Goldmann Taschen-Krimis. It was created as a pocketbooks series in 1952. In this format,  together  with new titles it republished many  books, which had  previously been published by Goldmann before the War, such as  Christie’s Das Geiheimnis von Sittaford.  The Goldmann pocket books used to cost  less than 2 Deutsche Mark  (1,90) until 1960. The price was then set at 2 DM.

The series has sold hundreds of millions of its little red books.  Due to the predominant red colour on the books cover, this series is  also called die Rote Reihe, the  Red Series.

British authors were very popular with its readers and are very well-reprensented in the more than two- thousand titles published in the series.   Victor Gunn (one of the pen-names of the prolific  and polymorphous Edwy Searles Brooks ( 1889 – 1965) is one of them. As are  of course, Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace.

  

English author of ‘cosy’ mystery novels” and  “golfing mysteries” , Herbert Adams (1874–1958) and his detective Roger Bennion, feature there too. The very first book published in this series, in 1952, was Edgar Wallace’s Der Frosch mit der Maske (The Fellowship with the Frog ) translated by Alma Johanna Koenig.

   

The series came to call itself after the colour of its cover,  Rote Krimi. as was the case in France (Série Noire)  and in Italy (Giallo)