33: The Golden Age of Crime Writing

Slightly Foxed

Diamond Dagger award-winning crime novelist and president of the Detection Club Martin Edwards and Richard Reynolds, crime buyer for Heffers Bookshop and member of the Crime Writers’ Association, lead our investigation in this month’s literary podcast. Together with the Slightly Foxed team, they take a magnifying glass to the Golden Age of crime fiction, tracing its origins to the interwar years when the Detection Club was founded and discussing why the genre continues to thrill.

From relishing The Poisoned Chocolates Case and resurrecting Death of a Bookseller to the mystery of E. C. R. Lorac’s missing manuscript and meeting Baroness Orczy’s Teahouse Detective, the plot twists and turns as we collect British Library Crime Classics and celebrate Crime Queens Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Josephine Tey and others along the way. Whether enjoyed as well-crafted puzzles, social documents or guilty pleasures, detective fiction is laced with nostalgia as well as cyanide. To tie up loose ends, we finish with a visit to Agatha Christie’s holiday home, Greenway, a house fit for Hercule Poirot, and the setting of a Devonshire murder hunt in Dead Man’s Folly.
Please find links to books, articles, and further reading listed below. The digits in brackets following each listing refer to the minute and second they are mentioned. (Episode duration: 44 minutes; 56 seconds)
Books Mentioned
We may be able to get hold of second-hand copies of the out-of-print titles listed below. Please get in touch with Jess in the Slightly Foxed office for more information.

• Mortmain Hall and The Crooked Shore, Martin Edwards
• The Murder at the Vicarage, Agatha Christie (3.57)
• The Nine Tailors, Dorothy L. Sayers. (4.29)
• The Red House Mystery, A. A. Milne (9.31)
• The Old Man in the Corner, Baroness Orczy (10.34)
• A Question of Proof, Nicholas Blake (12:09)
• The Cask, Freeman Wills Crofts (14.02)
• Lord Peter Wimsey, Dorothy L. Sayers (15:00)
• Cards on the Table, Agatha Christie (15.39)
• Francis Vivian’s Inspector Knollis Mysteries, published by Dean Street Press (15:58)
• Tragedy at Law, Cyril Hare (16:53)
• Thrones, Dominations, Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (18.03)
• Anthony Gilbert’s Arthur Crook novels (19.09)
• Portrait of a Murderer, Anne Meredith (19.38)
• Bloodshed in Bayswater, John Rowland is out of print (21.38)
• Death of a Bookseller, Bernard J. Farmer is due to be published in a British Library Crime Classics edition in 2022 (21:41)
• A Surprise for Christmas and Other Seasonal Mysteries and Murder at the Manor: Country House Mysteries, Ed. Martin Edwards (22:35)
• Two-Way Murder, E. C. L. Lorac (33.40)
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie (35.15)
• Verdict of Twelve, Raymond Postgate (35.25)
• And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie (35.57)
• Arrest the Bishop, Winifred Peck, published by Dean Street Press (37.56)
• The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Anthony Berkeley (38.42)
• The Dry, Jane Harper (40.05)
• Agatha Christie: A Biography, Janet Morgan (41.03)

Related Slightly Foxed Articles

• Murder Most Civilized, Emma Hogan on Agatha Christie, the Miss Marple books, Issue 17
• Vane Hopes, Victoria Neumark on the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers, Issue 32
• Hauntings, Michèle Roberts on Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, Issue 63
• A Gentleman on the Case, Brandon Robshaw on Margery Allingham, the Albert Campion novels, Issue 52
• The Judge’s Progress, P. D. James on Cyril Hare, Tragedy at Law, Issue 12
• Lost in the Fens, Julie Welch on the detective stories of Edmund Crispin, Issue 63

Other Links

• British Library Crime Classics (22:36)
• Dean Street Press (30:40)
• Download Heffers Crime Fiction Top 100, selected by Richard Reynolds. NB The file will download automatically on click. Please check your downloads folder (35:12)
• Agatha Christie’s holiday home, Greenway, in Devon (42:37)

Opening music: Preludio from Violin Partita No.3 in E Major by Bach

The Slightly Foxed Podcast is hosted by Philippa Lamb and produced by Podcastable