Bibliography of Authors Of the Golden Age of Mystery
Before the Golden Age - Establishment of the Genre
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)
Detective fiction in the English-speaking world is considered to have begun in 1841 with the publication of Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) featuring "the first fictional detective , the eccentric and brilliant C. August Dupin." When the character first appeared, the word detective did not even exist. However, the character's name "Dupin" originated from the English word dupe or deception. Poe devised a "plot formula that's been successful ever since, give or take a few shifting variables." Poe followed with further Auguste Dupin tales: The Mystery of Marie Roget in 1843 and The Purloined Letter in 1845.
Poe referred to his stories as "tales of ratiocination." In stories such as these, the primary concern of the plot is ascertaining truth, and the usual means of obtaining the truth is a complex and mysterious process combining intuitive logic, astute observation, and perspicacious inference. "Early detective stories tended to follow an investigating protagonist from the first scene to the last, making the unraveling a practical rather than emotional matter." The Mystery of Marie Roget is particularly interesting because it is a barely fictionalized account based on Poe's theory of what happened to the real-life Mary Cecilia Rogers.
Years Active: 1829-1848
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Another early example of a whodunit is a subplot in the novel Bleak House (1853) by Charles Dickens. The conniving lawyer Tulkinghorn is killed in his office late one night, and the crime is investigated by Inspector Bucket of the Metropolitan Police Force. Numerous characters appeared on the staircase leading to Tulkinghorn's office that night, some of them in disguise, and Inspector Bucket must penetrate these mysteries to identify the murderer. Dickens also left a mystery novel unfinished at his death, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. In 1859, he wrote a mystery short story titled Hunted Down that was while evocative of the period, mainly it was just short.
Years Active: 1836-1870
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889)
Dickens's protégé, Wilkie Collins - sometimes referred to as the "grandfather of English Detective Fiction" is credited with the first great mystery novel The Woman in White. T.S. Elliot called Collin's novel,The Moonstone (1868) ,"the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels....in a genre invented by Collins and not by Poe." Dorothy L. Sayers called it "probably the very finest detective story ever written." The Moonstone contains a number of ideas that have established in the genre several classic features of the 20th century detective story:
- English Country House Robbery
- An "inside job"
- red herrings
- A celebrated, skilled professional investigator
- Bungling local contabulary
- Detective Inquiries
- Large number of false suspects
- The "least likely suspect"
- A rudimentary "locked room" murder
- A reconstruction of the crime
- A final twist in the plot
Years Active: 1850-1886
Benjamin Farjeon (1838 - 1903)
A prolific pre-golden age novelist who was said to be admired by Dickens. It is easy to see why. Farjeon's Great Porter Square: A Mystery is almost Dickensian in scope. It is very long with a complex plotting and numerous characters and sub-plots. Farjeon wrote nearly sixty novels and short story collections. Today, he is almost better known for his offspring than his writing. He is the father of Joseph Jefferson Farjeon, who was a Golden Age participant.
Years Active: 1865 -1900
Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930)
In 1887, Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, arguably the most famous of all fictional detectives. Although Sherlock Holmes is not the original fiction detective (he was influenced by Poe's Dupin and Gaboriau's Lecoq), his name has become a byword for the part. Conan Doyle stated that the character of Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburg Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations. A brilliant London-based "consulting detective" residing at 221 B Baker Street. Holmes is famous for his intellectual prowess and is renowned for his skillful use of astute observation, deductive reasoning, and forensic skills to solve difficult cases. Conan Doyle wrote four novels and fifty-six short stories featuring Holmes and all but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend, assistant, and biographer, Dr. John Watson. The sometimes bumbling sometimes astute associate is a plot device used often by Golden Age authors.
Years Active: 1887-1929
E.C. Bentley (1875 -1956)
Edmond Clerihew Bentley was a journalist, novelist and sometime mystery writer. He only wrote three standalone mystery novels but one, Trent's Last Case (1913), is among the best ever written. Bentley was viewed in sufficiently high regard by his fellow mystery writers to elect him president of The Detection Club for thirteen straight years. Trent's Last Case with it's complex, winding plot and inticate detail is considered by some to be the first "modern" mystery novel. Trent himself, is almost the anti-detective. First, he is an artist who reluctantly does detective work for a newspaper on the side. He then complicates matters further by falling in love with one of the murder suspects. In Trent's Last Case, Bentley shows that contrary to traditional mysteries of the period, the same set of circumstances can be astutely but erroneously interpreted in several different ways. Written in 1913, Trent's Last Case predates the Golden Era but it was influential enough to be cited as an important work by some of the giants who followed.
Years Active: 1913 -1946
Bernard Capes (1854 - 1918)
Bernard Capes was another prolific author of forty books including romances, history and at least fifteen mysteries. Arguably his most famous, The Skeleton Key, went through eight editions from 1919 to 1929. Featuring, Baron Le Sage, a minor French nobleman with a penchant for chess, snuff, and solving crime. In this book, the chronicler is a young wastrel named Vivian Bickerdike who writes down the events in a manuscript found after his death. The plot is long and convoluted involving a country house, a girl in trouble (two in fact), and revenge. The Skeleton Key is a workman like book with enough twists and turns to keep your interest during a rather long prelude to the critical activity. Bernard Capes is a worthy predecessor to the Golden Age and would have no doubt written more had he not died in the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1919.
Years Active: 1888-1919
Agatha Christie (1890-1976)
One of the Queens of crime fiction. 75 novels, 28 short story collections and The Mousetrap, the longest running West End (London) play ever. One of the best selling authors of all time in any genre. "A Christie for Christmas," were the watchwords for many generations of readers. Generally acknowledged as the greatest mystery writer of the Golden Era, if not of all time.
Best known novels: And Then There Were None and Murder on the Orient Express
Most famous characters: Hercule Poirot, Mrs. Marple, Tommy and Tuppence
Years Active: 1920-1976
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957)
Another "Queen of Crime" with 18 books, several plays, movies and radio programs. Certainly, one of the most complex of the Golden Age authors, Sayers was scholar of classical and modern languages and published noted Christian writings as well. She "invented" Lord Peter Wimsey as a upper crust, Mayfair escape from her own mean existence working at an advertising agency. Apparently, London has always been an expensive place to live. Sayers did not have the output of Agatha Christie, but what she wrote was well plotted and sometimes cutting edge. Murder Must Advertise concerns the import, distribution and use of cocaine by London Society (in 1933!).
Like many people, I was introduced to Sayers through the extremely well done PBS series, The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries. The original series featured Ian Carmichael, who to me was the perfect Lord Peter. A later series, featuring Edward Petherbridge as Wimsey, while good, did not quite meet the high standards of the original.
Best Known Novels: Gaudy Night, Whose Body?, The Nine Tailors
Most Famous Characters: Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane
Years Active: 1923-1939
Margery Allingham (1902 -1966)
Margery Allingham, another of the four Queens of Crime (Christie, Sayers, and Ngaio Marsh are the others) published 19 novels and 20 short stories most featuring Albert Campion as the whimsical, aristocratic sleuth and Magersfontein Lugg as his slightly disreputable cockney side kick. Several books were published after Mrs. Allingham's death and written by her husband, Phillip Youngman Carter. Enormously popular, the Campion books are not true mysteries but rather more like adventure stories. Never the less, Margery Allingham deserves her perch at the very top of Golden Age writers. It is hard to pick a best known book, but Tiger in the Smoke is my favorite.
Years Active: 1929 - 1965
Ngaio Marsh (1895-1982)
Ngaio Marsh is the fourth Queen of Crime. I have always considered Marsh a 1950's and 1960's writer but almost one third of her 32 books were written during the Golden Era. Marsh had much is common with Josephine Tey. Although most of her books took place in London, Marsh was a New Zealander (Tey was from Scotland). Like Tey, Marsh's first love was the theater and she maintained an active presence in the theater throughout her life. Both Marsh and Tey never married but, unlike Tey, Marsh was an accomplished artist and actively showed her works in England and New Zealand during her lifetime.
Ngaia Marsh's one and only detective was the well born sophisticated Chief Detective-Inspector Roderick Alleyn of the London Metropolitan Police usually ably assisted by Detective-Inspector Fox. In later books, Alleyn marries and he is assisted by his wife, Agatha Troy. Several of Marsh's novels center around theater or art and four were located in her native New Zealand. Eight of Marsh's novels were dramatized on TV as the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries with Patrick Malahide playing Alleyn.
Years Active: 1934-1982
Edmund Crispin (1921-1978)
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym for Robert Bruce Montgomery, an English crime writer and composer. He wrote nine detective novels and two collections of short stories featuring Gervase Fen, an Oxford Don. Best known for The Moving Toy Shop (1946) considered by some to be one of the ten best Golden Age mystery novels.
Years Active: 1944-1977
Josephine Tey (1896 -1952)
Josephine Tey was the pseudonym used by Elizabeth MacKintosh for her eight mystery novels. She also wrote several successful plays under the name Gordon Daviot. Her most famous character was Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant, a non-traditional Golden Age detective. In 1990, The Crime Writers' Association named Tey's The Daughter of Time (1951), " the greatest mystery novel of all time" , but a posthumously published novel, The Singing Sands (1952), to me is among the very best of the Golden Era. Like many writers of this era, modern novelists have been commissioned to write "new" Josephine Tey books. In this regard, the keepers of Miss Tey's legacy have done her a disservice.
Years Active: 1929 - 1952
Michael Innes (1906-1994)
Michael Innes was the pen name for John Innes Mackintosh Stewart, a Scottish novelist and academic. Stewart wrote nearly fifty crime novels while serving as an academic most notably at Oxford, where many of his novels are located. Innes' best known character is Sir John Appleby, a Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard. Appleby was introduced in Death at the President's Lodging (1936), the only one of Innes' books that I have read. I found it entertaining but the plotting was somewhat intricate. Under his own name, Stewart wrote numerous academic texts as well as fiction and non-fiction novels.
Years Active: 1936-1986
Available: Amazon Kindle, Apple IBooks
Patricia Wentworth (1877-1961)
Patricia Wentworth was the pen name of Dora Amy Elles, a prolific author of mystery and other fiction novels. She wrote 32 crime novels featuring Miss Maud Silver, a discrete private detective in London. She is known for The Grey Mask (1928), the first Miss Silver Mystery but she also wrote mysteries featuring Frank Garrett, Ernest Lamb, Benbow Smith, and many other stand alone novels. Some do not regard Patricia Wentworth as a major Golden Age writer, but I have always enjoyed the Miss Silver mysteries and while formulaic they are the quintessential example of a "cozy" mystery, a lighter, less graphic subcategory of the Golden Age. Many of the Miss Silver books are essentially romance novels with a mystery element. Tellingly, Patricia Wentworth was never elected to the Detection Club.
Years Active: 1928-1961
Joseph Jefferson Farjeon (1883 - 1955)
Son of Benjamin Farjeon, namesake of Grandfather Joseph Jefferson, 19th century actor. Joe Jefferson traveled widely and was extremely popular. Among many other honors, he is remembered by "The Jeff," a series of awards given annually to Chicago Theatricals and the Joe Jefferson Players, an amateur theatre group in Mobile, AL.
Farjeon wrote 84 novels, a number of short stories and three plays. A few of his novels were made into movies including No. 17, which Alfred Hitchcock filmed in 1932. Hitchcock called No. 17 , "the worst (talking) movie I ever made." Having watched No. 17, I wholeheartedly agree. A character in No. 17, Ben, would later figure in a series of Farjeon books with his name in the title.
Farjeon experienced a brief revival in interest with The British Library reissue of his Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story (Originally published in 1938) in 2014.
Years Active: 1925 - 1946
Cecil Street (1884 - 1964)
Cecil John Charles Street originally wrote mystery novels as John Rhode whose protagonist was an academic named Dr. Priestley. Street also wrote non-Priestley mysteries as John Rhode and two more mystery series; one featuring Desmond Martin written as Miles Burton and a third series under the pen name, Cecil Waye. Street wrote many other fiction military novels as F.O.O. (Forward Observation Officer) and non-fiction military novels under his own name. Street as Rhode has been lumped in to a category of Golden Age novelists know as "the humdrum school" of detective fiction. This was a group of writers who were seen to produce commercial books that sold but were not true mysteries but instead simply puzzles with trick endings. I read The Robthorne Mystery (1934), a Dr. Priestley book, and found it very entertaining. Perhaps it did not have gravitas of a Christie or Tey, but it kept my attention and I looked forward to the denouement and that is all I ask from a mystery. Another indication that there is something to the John Rhode novels is that some of the earlier novels in good condition command $500+ at auction.
Years Years Active: 1925 - 1961
G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936)
G.K. Chesterton was another prolific writer of 80 Books, numerous short stories, poems, essays and plays. He wrote on religion, philosophy, art and literature. Chesterton's contribution to the Golden Age was the Father Brown mysteries, a popular series about a crime solving Catholic Priest. I must confess to not liking the Father Brown TV series very much. It had all of the characteristics of a mystery I would normally enjoy such as village life in 1920's England and recurring local characters. I often felt that there was not enough material for a full length program or if the material was sufficient, the plotting was weak.
I read my first Father Brown mystery, The Invisible Man, and much was revealed to me. The plot is a different take on Poe's The Purloined Letter and possibly anticipates current angst about Robots taking over the world by 50 years, but importantly the Father Brown mysteries are short stories. Sometimes very short, The Invisible Man (1911) was 27 pages. I enjoyed the story very much and it was entirely sufficient for what is was, a short story. The TV series was once again an example of modern day embellishment of a product to meet the needs of television, a purpose it was never supposed to fulfill.
Years Active: 1904 - 1936