The Golden Age of Murder

by Martin Edwards

  An eccentric homage to the Detection Club appeared sixty years after its formation, when American writer Gaylord Larsen published Dorothy and Agatha. His novel featured Sayers, Christie and other members of the Club solving the mystery of a dead man discovered in Sayers’ dining room. This pleasing concept was executed in such a slapdash way that Sayers might have been driven to murder had she read it. Larsen’s book, hailed by the publishers as rendering ‘every detail of character and place with uncanny accuracy’, is a masterclass in howlers so extraordinary that the reader’s initial astonishment turns into hilarity. Perhaps once she had recovered from Larsen’s hapless rendering of English life and geography, Sayers would have seen the funny side. Berkeley might just have appreciated the irony of Larsen’s belief that he succeeded Chesterton as President of the Detection Club.

  Subtler tributes to the pioneering work of Berkeley and company have been paid time and again by their illustrious successors. The global success of Inspector Morse and its television spin-offs Lewis and Endeavour owes much to Colin Dexter’s love of crossword puzzles and ability to craft whodunit mysteries as convoluted as those dreamed up in the Thirties. Lonely Magdalen has been followed by innumerable police procedurals, and The Killer and the Slain by endless dark novels of psychological suspense. Julian Symons’ The Man Who Killed Himself and Simon Brett’s A Shock to the System cleverly update Malice Aforethought, while P. D. James’ Original Sin carries distant echoes of Nicholas Blake’s End of Chapter, and her The Private Patient explicitly references Cyril Hare and his final novel, He Sould Have Died Hereafter, also known as Untimely Death. The central plot device in Lee Child’s One Shot, filmed as Jack Reacher, recalls one of Christie’s, while Amy in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl plays a trick reminiscent of Felix Lane’s in The Beast Must Die.

  Nor is the appeal of plot lines beloved by Golden Age authors confined to the English-speaking world. Japanese crime novelists have often written stories in the Golden Age tradition, and an Agatha Christie Award is given annually for an unpublished mystery novel. Hans Olav Lahlum’s Oslo-based mystery The Human Flies is a recent sample of Scandinavian noir that blends a seemingly impossible crime with a dash of Christie’s trickery with plot.

  A cult movie directed by Peter Greenaway, the enigmatic The Draughtsman’s Contract is but one of many unlikely examples of the influence of Golden Age writing on popular culture. According to Greenaway, the story is ‘not a thousand miles away from being an Agatha Christie story about a country house murder’; he compared the solution to that of Murder on the Orient Express.

  The highly successful TV series Sherlock combines a twenty-first century version of the Holmes–Watson pairing with storylines borrowing from the Golden Age: Berkeleyesque multiple solutions, Christie’s idea of a murder rehearsal, and Sayers’ theory that Watson’s middle name was Hamish (an ingenious means of reconciling Conan Doyle’s use of both John and James as his forenames). J. K. Rowling’s private detective, Cormoran Strike, may not resemble Lord Peter Wimsey physically, but like his predecessor he comes from a wealthy background (rock aristocracy in his case), went to Oxford, fought in battle and suffered grievously as a result, and is a man of innate decency. Rowling’s fondness for Latin quotations echoes Sayers’, although she has escaped the tedious complaints often directed at her predecessor’s supposed snobbery. The enduring connection between past and present is reinforced by the Christie estate’s commissioning of a brand new Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, from Sophie Hannah, a poet, bestselling author, and member of the Detection Club.

  Just as today’s leading writers are – sometimes consciously, often not – influenced by the work of their forebears in the Detection Club, so do their storylines regularly re-work elements from real life crimes. The storyline of A Place of Execution draws on a case where the body of a convicted murderer’s victim was never found. Ian Rankin’s breakthrough book Black and Blue revisited the ‘Bible John’ serial killings, and the mysterious death of a radical Scottish lawyer provided a starting point for The Impossible Dead. Meanwhile, the ghosts of Edmund Wilson and Queenie Leavis continue to rattle their chains; Mary Gaitskill’s lacerating review of Gone Girl begins with a giveaway admission typical of the genre’s loudest critics: ‘This is not a book I would normally read.’

  Detective fiction remains deeply embedded in popular culture, and so overwhelmingly popular that ‘literary’ novelists more open-minded than Wilson and Leavis regularly draw on it for inspiration. A. S. Byatt’s Possession and Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries embrace aspects of detection, while two more Man Booker prize-winning authors, John Banville and Julian Barnes, have written detective fiction under pseudonyms. Kazuo Ishiguro has noted that writers and readers of the Golden Age had ‘seen the face of modern evil – rampant nationalisms, blood-lust, racism, dehumanized technological mass killing, chaos no-one could control. The ‘Golden Age’ detective novels … are filled with a pining for a world of order and justice that people had once believed in, but which they now know full well is unattainable … It’s escapism, but escapism of a particularly poignant kind.’

  The Detection Club thrives to this day, holding three dinners each year, and publishing occasional books to supplement funds; the latest project is a round-robin novel whose title, The Sinking Admiral, gives a nod to the past. Each autumn sees the admission of newly elected members in a revised version of the initiation ritual which Ngaio Marsh witnessed, complete with Eric the Skull (although medical evidence suggests it should be re-named Erica). Members include such luminaries as P. D. James, Len Deighton and John le Carré, and the dinners are distinguished by the same sociable atmosphere that those strange literary bedfellows Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L. Sayers prized so highly.

  From the darkest days after her disappearance to the end of her life, Agatha Christie cherished the companionship she found in Detection Club. For almost half a century, the Club dinners were occasions where she could relax and feel she was among friends. When she was elected President, she was already a towering figure in popular fiction, but her lack of vanity and acute awareness of her limitations made her as popular with her fellow writers as with readers. Julian Symons was intrigued by the way she observed her companions, and speculated that she was making up stories about them in her head.

  Unpretentious about her craft, but utterly committed to it, she became the most legendary of novelists. As a playwright, she fashioned from a modest talent a play which has run in London for over sixty years without a break and become the stuff of legend. The statistics of her success are bewildering, so far does she outstrip her rivals. Nearly five decades after her death, her detective stories continue to be devoured by vast readerships of all ages and backgrounds throughout the world. People do care who killed Roger Ackroyd.

  The last word belongs to Christie. In 1940, at the height of the Blitz, when she could not know if she or her family and friends would survive for long, she inscribed a copy of Sad Cypress: ‘Wars may come and wars may go, but MURDER goes on forever!’

  Notes to Chapter 33

  One serious crime of which she was briefly suspected was treason

  See ‘MI5 Fears and an Agatha Christie Mystery over Enigma “leak”’, Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2013.

  She inspired and obsessed him.

  There has never been any published study of the relationship between Berkeley and Delafield, and my interpretation of it was at first based solely on my reading of their work. Subsequently, Berkeley’s stepdaughter told me about her understanding that Delafield was ‘the love of his life’, offering at least some confirmation for the general thrust of the theory advanced here.

  American writer Gaylord Larsen published Dorothy and Agatha

  A copy of the book was held in the Detection Club’s extensive library. After the Club ceased to rent premises, the library was kept at the homes of Club officers, although H. R. F. Keating reported that only one book was borrowed – by Julian Symons – during the time he looked after the libra
ry. The library included books signed by members as well as various criminological works, and many volumes contained a special bookplate designed for the Club by Christianna Brand’s cousin, the artist Edward Ardizzone. The library was eventually sold at auction to raise funds to subsidize future dinner meetings.

  According to Greenaway, the story is ‘not a thousand miles away from being an Agatha Christie story about a country-house murder’ See Peter Greenaway, ‘Murder he drew’, Guardian, 1 August 2003.

  Mary Gaitskill’s lacerating review of Gone Girl

  Mary Gaitskill, ‘In Charm’s Way: Gone Girl’s sickening worldview’, Bookforum, Sept/Oct/Nov 2013.

  The Sinking Admiral

  This new collaborative novel will be published by HarperCollins in 2016.

  such luminaries as P.D. James, Len Deighton

  Phyllis Dorothy White, Baroness James of Holland Park, (1920–2014), an author of outstanding detective novels, died shortly before this book went to press, having kindly offered me help and information in its earlier stages; she continued to attend Detection Club meetings to the end of her long and distinguished life. After Len Deighton (born 1929) read the manuscript of this book, he told me about two encounters with the then President of the Detection Club, the first as young man in the years before The IPCRESS File (1962) catapulted him to fame, the second at his initiation into membership of the Club:

  ‘When Agatha Christie tired of travelling on the Simplon-Orient Express to Stamboul (a journey she made famous) and then by Taurus Express to Aleppo and Beirut, she went first class on British Overseas Airways. On the Lockheed Constellation airliner, with only First Class passengers aboard, she sipped the champagne I poured for her. I was a BOAC flight attendant. I then met Agatha at my skull session [in 1969]. She said politely: “I don't think we have met before.” But I was able to correct her.’

  H. Warner Allen’s copy of Trent’s Own Case, signed by attendees at the Trent Dinner.

  Appendices

  Shown opposite and on the following pages is the original Constitution and Rules of the Detection Club, adopted 11 March 1932 (from the Detection Club Archive).

  Select Bibliography

  The primary sources for The Golden Age of Murder are the novels of the writers discussed, but a vast and eclectic literature deals with subjects touched on. These are some of the publications I found of particular interest and help.

  The Detective Fiction genre

  Adey, Robert, Locked Room Murders (London: Ferret Fantasy, 1979; rev. ed. 1991).

  Bailey, H. C., et al., Meet the Detective (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935).

  Bargainnier, Earl. F., ed., Twelve Englishmen of Mystery (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1984).

  Cooper, John, and B. A. Pike, Detective Fiction: The Collector’s Guide (Aldershot: Scolar Press, rev. ed. 1994).

  Craig, Patricia and Mary Cadogan, The Lady Investigates: Women Detectives and Spies in Fiction (London: Gollancz, 1981).

  Evans, Curtis, Was Corinne’s Murder Clued? The Detection Cub and Fair Play,1930–1953 (CADS magazine supplement 14; Benfleet: CADS, 2011).

  Foord, Peter, and Richard Williams, Collins Crime Club: A Checklist of the First Editions (Scunthorpe: Dragonby, 1987; rev. ed. 1999)

  Gilbert, Colleen B., A Bibliography of the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1978).

  Haycraft, Howard, Murder for Pleasure: The Life and Times of the Detective Story (New York: Appleton-Century, 1941).

  Haycraft, Howard, ed., The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946).

  Herbert, Rosemary, ed., The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  Hubin, Allen J., Crime Fiction 1749-1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography (New York: Garland, 1984).

  James, P. D., Talking About Detective Fiction (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2009).

  Keating, H. R. F., Murder Must Appetize (London: Lemon Tree, 1875).

  Keating, H. R. F., ed., Whodunit?: A Guide to Crime, Suspense and Spy Fiction (London: Windward, 1982).

  Knox, Ronald, ed., Best Detective Stories of the Year (1928) (London: Faber, 1929).

  Light, Alison, Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars (London: Routledge, 1991).

  Lobdell, Jared, The Detective Fiction Reviews of Charles Williams, 1930–1935 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2003).

  Mandel, Ernest, Delightful Murder (London: Pluto Press, 1984).

  Mann, Jessica, Deadlier than the Male (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1981).

  Nevins, Francis M., ed., The Anthony Boucher Chronicles, vols. i–iii (Shreveport, Louisiana: Ramble House, 2001–2).

  Overy, Richard, The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (London: Allen Lane, 2009).

  Panek, Leroy, Watteau’s Shepherds: The Detective Novel in Britain, 1914–1940 (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1979).

  Pedersen, Jay P., ed., The St James’ Guide to Crime and Mystery Writers (Chicago: St James’s Press, 1991).

  Queen, Ellery, Queen’s Quorum: A history of the detective-crime short story as revealed by the 106 most important books published in this field since 1845 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co, 1951).

  Rhode, John, ‘Foreword’, Detection Medley (London: Hutchinson, 1939).

  Routley, Erik, The Puritan Pleasures of the Detective Story (London: Gollancz, 1972).

  Sayers, Dorothy L., ed., Great Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (London: Gollancz, 1928).

  Sayers, Dorothy L., Les Origines Du Roman Policier: A Wartime Wireless Talk to the French (Hurstpierpoint: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 2003).

  Symons, Julian, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel (London: Faber, 1972; rev. eds. 1985, 1992).

  Symons, Julian, Criminal Practices: Symons on Crime Writing 60s to 90s (London: Macmillan, 1994).

  Thomson, H. Douglas, Masters of Mystery: A Study of the Detective Story (London: Collins, 1931).

  Turnbull, Malcolm J., Victim or Villain: Jewish Images in Classic English Detective Fiction (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1998).

  Watson, Colin, Snobbery with Violence: English Crime Stories and their Audience (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1971; rev. ed. Eyre Methuen, 1979).

  Waugh, Evelyn, Ronald Knox (London: Chapman & Hall, 1959).

  Winks, Robin W., ed., Colloquium of Crime (New York: Scribners, 1986).

  Winks, Robin W., ed., Detective Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1980).

  Authors

  Barnard, Robert, A Talent to Deceive (London: Collins, 1980; rev. ed. 1990).

  Bentley, E.C., Those Days (London: Constable, 1940).

  Bentley, Nicolas, A Version of the Truth (London: Deutsch, 1960).

  Brabazon, James, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography (London: Gollancz, 1981).

  Brand, Christianna, ‘Introduction’, The Floating Admiral (Boston: Gregg Press, 1979).

  Cade, Jared, Agatha Christie and the Missing Eleven Days (London: Peter Owen, 1998; rev. ed. 2011).

  Carter, Philip Youngman, All I Did Was This: Chapters of an Autobiography (Nashville: Sexton, 1982).

  Christie, Agatha, An Autobiography (London: Collins, 1977).

  Cole, Dame Margaret, The Life of G. D. H. Cole (London: Macmillan, 1971).

  Cole, Margaret, Growing Up into Revolution (London: Longmans, Green, 1949).

  Curran, John, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks: Fifty Years of Mystery in the Making (London: HarperCollins, 2009).

  Curran, John, Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making: Stories and Secrets from Her Archive (London: HarperCollins, 2011).

  Dean, Christopher, ed., Encounters with Lord Peter (Hurstpierpoint: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 1991).

  Donaldson, Norman, In Search of Dr Thorndyke (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1971; rev. ed. 1998).

  Drayton, Joanne, Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime (Auckland, Collins, 2008)
<
br />   Evans, Curtis, Masters of the ‘Humdrum’ Mystery: Cecil John Charles Street, Freeman Wills Crofts, Alfred Walter Stewart and the British Detective Novel, 1921–1961 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2012)

  Evans, Curtis, ed., Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G. Greene (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2014).

  Ffinch, Michael, G.K. Chesterton: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld, 1986).

  Fitzgerald, Penelope, The Knox Brothers (London: Macmillan, 1977).

  Gorell, Lord, One Man … Many Parts (London: Odhams, 1956).

  Greene, Douglas G., John Dickson Carr: The Man Who Explained Miracles (New York: Otto Penzler, 1993).

  Hall, Trevor H., Dorothy L. Sayers: Nine Literary Studies (London: Duckworth, 1980).

  Hart-Davis, Rupert, Hugh Walpole (London: Macmillan, 1952).

  Hone, Ralph L., Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1979).

  Johns, Ayresome, The Anthony Berkeley Cox Files: Notes Towards a Bibliography (London: Ferret Fantasy, 1993).

  Jones, Julia, The Adventures of Margery Allingham (Pleshey: Golden Duck, 2009).

  Keating, H. R. F., Agatha Christie: First Lady of Crime (London: Weidenfeld, 1977).

  Kenney, Catherine, The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990).

  Lewis, Margaret, Ngaio Marsh: A Life (London: Chatto & Windus, 1991).

  Lougherey, John, Alias S. S. Van Dine: The Man Who Created Detective Philo Vance (New York: Scribner, 1992).

  Mallowan, Max, Mallowan’s Memoirs (London: Collins 1977).

  Marsh, Ngaio, Black Beech and Honeydew (London: Collins, 1976, rev. ed. 1981).

  Mayo, Oliver, R. Austin Freeman: The Anthropologist at Large (Hawthorndene, South Australia: Investigator, 1980).