Golden Age Gateway to a Lifetime of Crime Fiction

 

HALLIE EPHRON: Earlier this summer, The New York Times published Sadie Stein's list of her "10 best escapist" mystery novels from the Golden Age (generally the period between the two world wars), capable of getting a reader hooked on the mystery genre.


I was pleased by how many I'd read, but surprised by how many I HADN'T read. Even authors I'd never heard of.

I was expecting the list to include "greats" like Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Josephine Tey, John Dickson Carr, Earl Stanley Gardner... . But I was surprised by some of the authors whose work I've never read.

So, my dears, what do you think of this list? Have you read the books on the list, and what would you add, maybe one that got you started reading crime novels?

Here's Ms. Stein's list…

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
by Agatha Christie (1926)
A mystery featuring her delicious creation, Hercule Poirot, six years after she introduced him to the world in “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” in 1920. Ms. Stein calls it "a master class in red herrings, misdirection and unreliable narration, and it ends with perhaps the greatest twist of all time."

Fer-de-Lance
by Rex Stout (1934)
This is the first novel featuring the massively massive Nero Wolfe with his sidekick (Archie) who channels a Fred Astaire vibe. Wolfe never leaves his office, never mind his chair. Loves orchids and veal cordon bleu, and "gets" women not at all.

The Franchise Affair
by Josephine Tey (1948)
Stein calls this one an "unsettling and acid-tinged nail-biter." In it, an elderly woman and her daughter are accused of kidnapping a teenage orphan, but their defense counsel (Robert Blair) is convinced they are innocent. Based on a real 18th-century case, the novel was and remains as controversial.

The Case of the Lame Canary
by Erle Stanley Gardner (1937)
The 11th novel featuring defense attorney Perry Mason (and published long before the TV show featuring him and the lovely Della Street began), the intrigue begins when a gorgeous broad brings the eponymous injured bird to his office.

The Duke of York’s Steps
by Henry Wade (1929)
In Scotland Yard's Chief Inspector Poole's second outing, a banker is found murdered near London’s Duke of York monument. It's known for its great final twist.

Fear Stalks the Village
by Ethel Lina White (1932)
Into an idyllic village comes a series of poison-pen letters. Joan Brook, companion to Lady d’Arcy, receives one. So many suspects, from the vicar to a lady novelist. Paranoia abounds.

The Blank Wall
by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding (1947)
At home in Connecticut while her husband fights in the Pacific, Lucia Holley tries to keep her teenage daughter safe from a creepy older man. Murder and blackmail on the home front, with Mom trying to keep everyone safe.

A Man Lay Dead
by Ngaio Marsh (1934)
A frivolous weekend party at an English country house with games that turn all too real. Enter handsome Roderick “Rory” Alleyn, intent on identifying the killer who planted an antique dagger in a guest’s back.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club
by Dorothy L. Sayers (1928)
Wealthy amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey solves another (his fourth) murder. An elderly general is found dead in his armchair at his "club" and his sister is found dead at home. Who inherits? Subtle insights into the fallout from the Great War, even for those most cosseted by British society.

The Tiger in the Smoke
by Margery Allingham (1952)
In gentleman detective Albert Campion's 14th case set in postwar London, his supposedly widowed cousin needs him to investigate whether her husband really died on D-Day.

The Hollow Man
by John Dickson Carr (1935) A great locked-room mystery featuring Dr. Gideon Fell (supposedly modeled on G.K. Chesterton.) A body, three Transylvanian brothers, faked deaths, live burials, and a magician keep the reader juggling clues.

RHYS BOWEN: I am also surprised to see names I never knew about! I have read every Christie, Sayers, Marsh and most Allingham but this is a Josephine Tey I’d never heard of before.

I’m trying to remember which was my first Christie. I think it was The Body in the Library.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: I just read The Hollow Man for an article on locked room mysteries I wrote, and whoa, it is….dated. But seminal, so there’s that.

Wade, White, and Holding? NO idea! That’s so perplexing. I thought I was tuned in. I think I’ve read the rest, wait, no, not that particular Allingham, which I have to say is SUCH a good idea. And some of the others sound terrific.

My first Christie was Orient Express, still completely fabulous, and definitely got me hooked on the whole genre, but Ackroyd is the best. Got to agree. And oh, I was in LOVE with Roderick Alleyn. And Peter Wimsey.

LUCY BURDETTE: I believe I’ve only read the first two and wouldn’t want to take a quiz on their contents! My gateway drugs were Nancy Drew and the Bobbsey Twins and the Hardy boys and Cherry Ames.

JENN McKINLAY: I’ve read five – Christie, Tey, Gardner, March and Sayers–but that was decades ago when I worked as a page at my local library in high school and my grandmother was addicted to mysteries so we read everything we could get our hands on by those authors.

I’ve never heard of Wade, White, or Holding, but I am absolutely tracking down a copy of White’s Fear Stalks the Village. It sounds fabulous!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I've read the Christie, the Marsh, the Sayers, the Allingham, and the Tey. I remember that while I loved some of Tey's other books (Brat Farrar!!) I didn't particularly like The Franchise Affair but I could not tell you the plot. Three of the authors, Wade, White, and Holding, I'd never even heard of! I I might have to look up Wade's The Duke of York's Steps! 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As you may recall, I became a mystery writer after trying my hand at my then-reading favorite, science fiction, so I'm late catching up to the founding fathers and mothers. I'm still much more conversant with SF's Golden Age!

I've dipped in and out of several of these authors, but I clearly have a lot more to go. I'm surprised nothing by Mary Roberts Rinehart is included; she was a major American crime writer from the 'teens through the early forties, and she's credited with the (now old) term, "the butler did it!"

Hallie: So, Readers... what about you? Were there any "Golden Age" mystery writers whose work introduced (and hooked you) on the genre? Whose book would you add to this list??

Who Do You Love?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Ever fallen in love with a character in a book? We all have, I bet. King Arthur always appealed to me (much more than Lancelot), and Henry V, and my affection for Morse is well-known around the Jungle Red salon. Charles (and Caroline) Todd’s Inspector Rutledge, love him, and Roderick Alleyn, and John Lescroart’s Dismas Hardy. What can I say? I do.

And I can certainly understand, as Liz Zelvin says, that Dorothy Sayers fell in love with Peter Wimsey. Who wouldn’t?

But what about our own characters’ ability to make us love them? Hmm. That’s interesting, because we created them. Didn’t we?

Long time dear friend of the Reds Elizabeth Zelvin is a psychotherapist in her other life, so I bet—she can explain it.

Falling in Love with A Secondary Character

Elizabeth Zelvin

It's widely understood that writers sometimes fall in love with their own characters. In the mystery genre, most famously, Dorothy L. Sayers is said to have fallen in love with Lord Peter Wimsey as he developed from a Bertie Wooster-like silly ass about town in the early books into a brilliant, perceptive, superbly competent, and highly attractive man--what today we might call a feminist's kind of man. I don't know if Harriet Vane would have called herself a feminist, but in my late 20th to 21st century eyes, she's one of us.

Being a feminist, I'm mildly embarrassed by the fact that I have now written two series with male protagonists: the Bruce Kohler mysteries and the Diego Mendoza and Admiral Columbus series, including the Agatha-nominated "The Green Cross" and my new novel, Voyage of Strangers.

When somebody asks a group of authors, "Who writes about a strong female character?" I instinctively raise my hand. Oops. The truth is, having been writing my whole life before getting my first novel published at age 64, I felt I was entitled to leapfrog over the young novelist's autobiographical opus and write about someone quite different from myself: in this case, recovering alcoholic Bruce Kohler, a New Yorker with a smart mouth and an ill-concealed heart of gold ("ham on wry," as he says himself).

Diego, the young marrano sailor with Columbus who made his first appearance in "The Green Cross" and tells the story of Columbus's second voyage in Voyage of Strangers, is one of those characters who appear unexpectedly out of the unconscious or the ether or wherever the Muse hangs out, demanding that their voice be heard. The author is just the channel. I've always felt as if Diego is not only real, but had been waiting for five hundred years for me to tell his story. Voyage of Strangers is about what really happened when Columbus discovered America, told from the outsider perspective of a secret Jew at the moment when the Jews were driven out of Spain on pain of torture and death at the hands of the Inquisition.

Those who have read my mysteries know that I do have a significant woman character: Barbara, a world-class codependent who only wants to help and is addicted to minding everybody's business, especially Bruce's and her boyfriend Jimmy's (Bruce's best friend), whether the business at hand is sobriety or murder. I'm very fond of Barbara, but I can't say I'm in love with her. It would be too much like looking in the funhouse mirror. Barbara isn't me, but we have much in common, including being nice Jewish girls from Queens who never expected to know as much as we do about alcoholism. Unlike me, Barbara has no boundaries and no brakes. It's what makes her such fun to write. Readers have told me she is a strong female character. Some think she's "a hoot." And at least one person asked me if I'd ever felt (as she evidently did) as if I wanted to slap Barbara. I don't mind. If Barbara's that real to readers, I'm happy.

There were no women on the voyage of discovery in 1492, so of course there were no women in "The Green Cross," which took place on the Santa Maria. Nor did I develop any female characters in "Navidad," the second story in the series. (Both stories first appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.) But I couldn't write a novel without women. Diego's sister Rachel was simmering in my head for more than a year before I set a word of Voyage of Strangers on virtual paper. And I'm in love with Rachel.

As it happens, the Jews were expelled from Spain on the same day Columbus and his three ships set sail into the unknown. So how come Rachel was still in Spain when Columbus and his men returned in triumph early in 1493? The Mendoza family had lived in Seville, where the Inquisition had been cheerfully burning Jews (and especially converso backsliders, whom they called heretics and swine--marranos) for years. Rachel, the youngest daughter, had been sent away to a convent school in Barcelona, where there was no tribunal and a genuine converso aunt with influence, for safety. But the aunt is being courted by a rather nasty supporter of the Inquisition, and Diego quickly realizes he has to get her out of Spain as soon as possible.

When we first meet Rachel, she's putting on a friend's brother's clothes, preparatory to sneaking out of the convent and into the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who will be greeting Columbus and his followers and getting their first look at the treasures and curiosities he's brought back, including gold, near-naked Taino captives, and some colorful but ill-behaved parrots. She's thinking, How hard can it be to be a boy?

I certainly didn't plan it, but Rachel is a darling. She's irrepressible, curious, impulsive, brave, and funny, and everyone who meets her loves her. Diego is determined to send her to Italy, where their parents and sisters have gone, before he embarks on the second expedition to Hispaniola. Rachel is equally determined to go with him, even when Admiral Columbus himself says no. (Of course she spoke up and asked him almost as soon as she met him. That's Rachel.) 

Whether she's getting the mayor's wife in a Spanish village to roast a kid (ie a baby goat) for their dinner on the road, concocting a plan to help a Moorish slave escape from slavery, outclimbing the ship's boys in the rigging of the Mariagalante on the Ocean Sea, or playing batey, pounding yuca, or making poisoned arrowheads with her Taino friends, Rachel has a gift for friendship and for adapting to any surroundings. Her favorite words to her brother are, "Diego, you worry too much."

It took a long time to get Voyage of Strangers published once I'd written it. But one of the reasons I persisted was that I wanted so much to introduce Rachel to all of you. I think you'll love her too.

HANK: Liz! The research! How did you get involved in this story?

And Reds, what character have you fallen in love with? 

******************************

Elizabeth Zelvin is a New York psychotherapist and author of the Bruce Kohler mystery series as well as the Diego Mendoza and Admiral Columbus series. Her new novel, Voyage of Strangers, is available for Kindle and Kindle app at

http://tinyurl.com/voyage-strangers. Three of Liz's stories have been nominated for the Agatha Award and one for the Derringer Award for Best Short Story. Her author website is at http://elizabethzelvin.com.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

DEBORAH CROMBIE:We've talked about which famous people (dead or alive) we'd all invite to our fantasy dinner parties. Mixing and matching any writer/artist/thinker from any era is fun, but it's a bit of cheat, really, isn't it, putting people together who would never have met?

Having recently seen MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (a bit behind on my Oscar viewing...) which I adored, I started to wonder two things.

First, if we could pick any group of writers/artists/thinkers, a "salon", which would it be? ("Salon" is defined by Wikipedia as: "... a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please or to educate" ("aut delectare aut prodesse est"). Salons, commonly associated with French literary and philosophical movements of the 17th and 18th centuries, were carried on until quite recently, in urban settings, among like-minded people.")

Would we, like Gil in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, choose Hemingway's Paris? Or the Romantics of early 19th century France? And what about the Bloomsbury group in Edwardian England--Rupurt Brooke, Virginia Woolf and their set of writers, poets, painters, and philosphers? Or the Beat Poets of 1950s America?

My choice from my teens, and I think still, would be The Inklings, the informal Oxford University discussion group which met from the early 1930s to 1949, often at the Eagle and Child (the Bird and Baby) pub in Oxford, and included J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis among its members. They read aloud from their works in progress--and I suspect downed a pint or two while they were at it.

Unfortunately, except for the occasional inclusion of Enid Blyton, all the members were male... Hmmm. Definitely a gender issue here. Maybe I should rethink Paris...

My second question is whether the physical salon is a thing of the past. In our mobile age, will like-minded artists and thinkers ever again come together as a group in a way that will influence contemporary culture--except on the internet?

And if so, is the virtual salon a substitute for midnight in Paris?

(By the way, if you Google virtualsalon.com, you get beauty shops.)

RHYS BOWEN: I think one would have to go back into the past to find a salon. I'm not sure why, but modern writers tend to talk about anything other than their writing when they are together. I've been at a meal with A list writers and not one of them has spoken of the angst of creation of a work in progress. Occasionally we bitch about the latest twelve year old publicist who has messed up a book tour, but mostly the talk is of non-writing related things.

I'm not a big drinker so I don't think I'd have fitted in well with Scott and Zelda and Hemingway in Paris, although it might have been fun--and I would have loved to have met Dali! But on the whole I'd prefer a gathering of women. Men tend to hog the conversation! I think Dorothy Sayers and her Oxford friends in the 1930s would have been entertaining.

JAN BROGAN - As we all by now know I'm totally hot for Herman Melville, I'd have to go with Anne Charlotte Lynch's Greenwich Village salon in the 1840s (also the period I'm researching). Besides Melville, who was a regular, Edgar Allan Poe allegedly read "The Raven" at the Waverley Place house, and Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly came to hang out.

As for now? Salon.com, right? And Facebook groups, that's probably the closest you will come.

LUCY BURDETTE: In a great burst of serendipity, MIDNIGHT IN PARIS came to us from Netflix last week so we watched it Saturday night. So much fun! And such a Woody-Allenish leading man--we could picture Woody wishing he could play the lead but realizing he was a little too old...And can't you imagine how many trips to Paris that movie sold? Showed the city at it's absolute best.

Anyway, Debs, back to the subject--I'd choose Gertrude Stein's salon because it seemed like she could manage whoever came. I studied surrealism in college, actually wrote a thesis on Max Ernst, so I'd love to meet that crowd!

As for real salons today, maybe that's why we're still drawn to attending mystery conventions, even if we don't sell enough books to nearly pay our way. We're alone so much of the time--we love getting together with other writers and readers to gab! Speaking of which, 7 of 8 Jungle Reds will be at Bouchercon--really looking forward to that!

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I confess this is something I've never really thought about. I'd love to say "Oh yes! Vita-Sackville West!" and really mean it, but I'm quite happy talking to the dog and my husband about writing! And talking to myself, of course. My favorite salon takes place when I'm in the car talking to myself!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Rosemary, I do love you. (And I adored the movie. Especially the message that NOW is best. I did think, though, that Owen Wilson would never have been engaged to that woman in the first place. But, whatever.)
Anyway, thinking about this, what I'd prefer is to be INVISIBLE, and get to listen in as everyone else talks. Then I wouldn't have to worry about being clever or brilliant, I could just soak it all in. Stephen King, say, talking to...oh, who knows. Paul Simon. Wouldn't that be great?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'd sort of like to say the Bloomsbury group for their amazing wit and talent, but I suspect all their adulteries and triangular relationships and seething semi-repressed homosexuality would be exhausting to be around. Sort of like freshman year in a dorm full of high achievers.

So instead, I'd pick Concord in it's 19th century flower. Hawthorne and Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau, and the Bostonians who were their friends, like the Peabody sisters and Margaret Fuller. Transcendentalism! Poetry! Women's rights! All amid the lilacs and maple trees of one of the most beautiful towns in New England.

DEBS: Oh, I can see us going off on SO many fun tangents... Hank, I think you definitely have a thing for Paul Simon... (and I agree that Gil would never have really been engaged to that horrible woman.) Jan, fascinated by the 1840s New England writers. Imagine having heard Poe read! (Isn't John Cusack going to play him in a movie? How fun is that?) Rhys, oh, to have eavesdropped on Dorothy Sayers and her chums... Ro, I talk to the dog, too, and I have a thing for Vita Sackville-West, but that's another post. Lucy, yes, 7 out of 8 of us--as Hank said, the whole point of the movie was that we should make our own glamor, and so let's hope that we do.

Readers, what group would you like to have joined? Or, would you, like Hank, have sat quietly in the corner and listened?

It's a Crime--in Oxford

DEB: Want to know the best kept secret in the crime-writing conference world?

It's the St. Hilda's Crime and Mystery Conference. It's been held every August since 1994 in St. Hilda's College, Oxford--and that's England, not Mississippi.

There's no web page. St Hilda's doesn't advertise--it doesn't need to. Because those in the know come back every year if they can, and they tell their friends . . . and now I'm telling you.

Want to have a glorious English summer weekend taking in the dreaming spires of Oxford, staying in an Oxford college, mingling with brilliant writers and speakers? A drinks reception in the college senior common room? Champagne on the lawn overlooking the River Cherwell? And the punting--well, we'll get to that.

Writer Kate Charles gives us the scoop.

KATE: The first St Hilda’s conference was organized in 1994 by Eileen Roberts, then the Alumni Affairs Officer of the college, as an activity for the college’s graduates. Eileen was (is) a great lover of mysteries/crime fiction, and the possessor of a huge collection of books in her office. The number of times they were borrowed was a clue to her that many others shared her passion, and she decided that a weekend event featuring speakers about women crime writers with Oxford connections would be well attended.

It was! Speakers at that first conference included Lindsey Davis, Margaret Yorke (once the librarian of St. Hilda’s), Kate Charles, and Sarah Caudwell. At the end of that first conference, Kate conducted a survey to see whether people would be interested in coming back another year. The response was an overwhelming yes; Kate offered to help organize it, and she and Eileen have been doing it ever since. This year will be the 18th conference.

It differs from other conferences in having a more academic tone - speakers present papers rather than participate in panel discussions. That doesn’t mean it isn’t fun, as well as stimulating!

It’s also a themed conference. Each year a different theme is selected and addressed by speakers (mostly working writers, with a few academics added in) who are invited to focus on that particular theme. Themes have included historical mysteries, academic mysteries, the police (‘Men and Women in Blue’), and other such intriguing topics as ‘Strong Poison’, ‘All in the Family’, ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’, and ‘Behind the Mask’. This year’s theme is ‘The Anatomy of Justice’.

Last year the conference paid tribute to P.D. James during the week of her 90th birthday with a gala birthday lunch. Baroness James has been in attendance a number of times over the years, as has Oxford favourite Colin Dexter. There have been far too many excellent speakers to mention!

The Sunday morning punting competition has been a feature most years, ably organized by Gillian Linscott. The champagne reception on the lawn, held the first evening (on the lawn if the weather is fine!) is always memorable. Mystery Women host a reception after dinner on the Saturday night. There is always a well-equipped book room and a group signing.

At this conference, writers (speakers and others) and readers mingle without any distinction made between them. It has the atmosphere of a large country house party - very friendly, and in the most beautiful of settings, by the river, tucked away from the tourist-ridden centre of Oxford.

Speakers this year are: Natasha Cooper (Chair), Triona Adams (on Sarah Caudwell), Martin Edwards, Penelope Evans, Jane Finnis, Frances Fyfield, Ann Granger, Bernard Knight (Guest of Honour), Val McDermid, Edward Marston, Ayo Onatade, Cath Staincliffe, and Andrew Taylor. The programme will be released in the next few days.

DEB: Although I haven't made it to St. Hilda's nearly as often as I'd like, I have some precious memories. My first year was (I think!) 1995. I was invited as a speaker, and PD James was the guest of honor. This meant that at the Saturday night dinner (which that year was held at Somerville College) I got to sit at the high table with PD James in Dorothy Sayer's college. It seemed an unimaginable honor, then and now.

(In the photo of Baroness James speaking at last year's dinner in honor of her birthday, that's Andrew Taylor on the left and Peter Lovesey on the right. Lovely guys and two of my favorite writers. I'm so sorry I missed that one.)

And the punting? I'll never forget skimming along the Cherwell, propelled by Laurie King, a veritable Valkyrie at the pole. Here, Laurie elegantly punts Marcia Talley and Kate Charles.

If you think a weekend in Oxford with terrific crime writers might be your cup of tea, you can contact Eileen Roberts at

eileen.roberts@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk


And one more picture. Who is that impossibly young writer with the glamorous Kate Charles and Marcia Talley?