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??

Cakes and Ale. A Guest Post by Marty Wingate

RHYS BOWEN: MY guest today has set her latest book in Bath, which is the city of my birth. A city I adore and always make time to stop over there when we are in England. What I like about it most is that so little has changed: the Georgian crescents, my grandmother's Georgian house on Landsdowne, the Roman baths where I once swam as a child and of course the restaurants and pubs... both dear to Marty's heart. So please welcome her now:

MARTY WINGATE: Give me a mystery with great characters and a compelling story, but also give me an atmosphere to make a book come alive. But by “atmosphere,” I don’t mean just tone—a gothic suspense or dark and gritty noir—but also the practicalities of setting, weather, and the food and drink. For me, these elements combine to give the story life on and off the page. That is why I made Bath, the setting for The Bodies in the Library (book one in my new First Edition Library mysteries) as alive as the places in some of my favorite books.

A sense of place is vital. On a visit to Edinburgh, and deep into Ian Rankin’s Rebus books, I walked across the Meadows toward the city center and marveled that I was following John Rebus’s footsteps. I had half a mind to walk over to Marchmont and find the building and his flat, but brought myself up short. I might’ve been reading the book in which Rebus had let the flat to some students, and so he wouldn’t be there anyway. I kept walking, but, still with the character in mind, to the Oxford Bar to have a whisky.

The Norfolk Broads, in all their flat, bleak beauty, come alive in Elly Griffiths’s Ruth Galloway series. Not just the scenery, but also the weather plays a serious role here—the rain, the icy roads in winter, the remnants of standing stones in the boggy ground, shreds of fog suspended in the air. But when she’s at home, even though surrounded by such a place, Ruth’s main concern is to cook up the quickest meal she can think of.

Certainly I want Andrea Camillieri’s Inspector Montalbano to catch whoever has carried out such a horrific murder, but also I want to know what his housekeeper has left him in the fridge for his dinner. And, I’m not sure I could make it through an entire Bruno Chief of Police book without Martin Walker’s protagonist harvesting from his garden and cooking what always sounds like a feast.

I do keep coming back to the food and drink, don’t I? In The Bodies in the Library, I wanted Bath to come alive in its Georgian splendor, Roman past, and love of all things Austen. Most importantly, I wanted it to exist as the home of the Golden Age of Mystery library, for which my main character, Hayley Burke, is curator. Of course, she is not only a curator of a collection of first editions by Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and the others, but also the practical 45-year-old single mother of a college student, daughter of an invalid mother, and ex of a man that tries her patience on a regular basis.

I enlisted the help of food and drink in this effort to create Hayley as a whole person, and I started with the Ready Meal aisle at Waitrose.

Can you love a grocery store? It’s certainly one of my favorite places to go when my husband and I spend time in Britain. We usually stay in a flat, and those fresh dinners—cottage pie, lasagne, macaroni cheese—are perfect. They’re perfect for Hayley, too, who has slacked off cooking since her daughter moved away.

But there is more to food and drink than dinner—there is tea (or coffee) and cake. These are not just something to keep the character busy; they are vital elements to the story. Without the satisfaction of nabbing the last fruit scone at the Waitrose café the day after the murder, would Hayley have had the clarity of mind to make a plan with Val?

My in-house copy editor (my husband) would not allow this post to go further without mention of pubs and ale.

I stay true to Bath as it is today—I’d like to think a reader could use The Bodies in the Library as a map to walk around the city—except on one tiny point, and that is the pub I call the Minerva. A tiny pub on Northumberland Place does exist, but its real name is the Coeur de Lion. I changed the name, you see, because I wanted that nod to the Roman history in Bath. But otherwise, it’s the same place—you could march right in there and ask for an orange squash with fizzy water and a packet of crisps as Hayley does. Although, her ulterior motive is to question a shady character.

I changed nothing about the Raven, a fabulous pub on the corner of Quiet and Queen streets and not far from the Jane Austen Centre. Eat and drink downstairs or up—Hayley prefers upstairs, where she might be able to grab the corner table by the window. Order one of their house ales (I am instructed here to tell you they are brewed by Blindmans Brewery in Frome, Somerset) and a pie, such as chicken-and-mushroom or beef-and-ale or vegetarian, sitting atop a pile of buttery mash.

Hungry? Thirsty? Join Hayley for cakes and ale as she solves a murder inspired by the Golden Age of Mystery.

Marty Wingate writes The First Edition Library mysteries, set in Bath and featuring Hayley Burke, a curator of rare and collectible books from the Golden Age of Mystery who has never read a detective story in her life. Book one – The Bodies in the Library (Berkley) – was released October 8. She leads garden tours to Britain, spending free moments deep in research. Or in pubs.