Talking About the Detection Club

It is often said that the “Golden Age of Detective Fiction” took place in between the two World Wars. For my money, such a characterisation is far too simplified and gives rise to a popular narrative Julian Symons’ Bloody Murder sets out, which treats Golden Age fiction like some freak of nature which popped up between the two world wars because [insert pet sociological theory here]. I cringe whenever this view of the genre’s history is brought up, all too often by authors eagerly assuring you that their stuff transcends all that silly puzzle nonsense and Asks Really Deep Questions [translation: There Is No Plot].

The truth is, the Golden Age was a time of great variety and experimentation within the genre, and The Detection Club was formed in the late 20s in England. The exclusive club gave authors a chance to socialize, and since membership was attained only by secret ballot, it was also a way to ensure the quality of the genre remained high. Martin Edwards’ The Golden Age of Murder looks at the men and women who were members of The Detection Club during the Golden Age. It’s an enormous project, one which might overwhelm a lesser man.

The Doctor is Out

It wasn’t exactly my intention, but I seem to have accidentally made this week an unofficial “Crippen Week” with my literary choices. I started off the week by reading Peter Lovesey’s excellent The False Inspector Dew, and from there I moved on to Martin Edwards’ Dancing for the Hangman. After the excellent All The Lonely People, I was eager to try another one of the author’s books, and I had already purchased Dancing for the Hangman. So the choice was fairly simple.

The book is a retelling of the story of Dr. H. H. Crippen, a notorious murderer hanged in England in 1910. A fascinating idea, that, and it immediately convinced me to buy the book. But I wasn’t quite sure what I was about to get myself into. Was this going to be a work of non-fiction—a laborious reconstruction of the case with Edwards’ personal theory as to the solution? Or was this going to be a cheerfully fictitious work that invented a wild theory in which Crippen was the victim of a conspiracy? The product descriptions didn’t quite help, so I asked Martin Edwards himself. Here is his reply:

" [It] was conceived as a novel about the character of Crippen that remains true to the established facts, as I understand them, but tries to make psychological sense of them so as to explain the various paradoxes of the case. It's meant to be psychologically plausible, but of course since nobody knows what actually happened, I don't claim this as a definitive interpretation of the case."

How long have you been a lonely guy?

I have been a reader of Martin Edwards’ excellent blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name?, for quite some time. I can’t recall when I started to read it, but it was one of the first blogs to make it onto my blogroll. His blog is literally one of the very best mystery blogs on the Internet; he shows great admiration and respect for masters of the form, both past and present, such as Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, or Peter Lovesey. But much to my shame, I had not read any of Martin’s books. The shame was only compounded when a fellow blogger, PuzzleDoctor, began to review Martin’s books on his own excellent blog. The praise was consistent and recommendations were handed out as freely as Hallowe’en candy. I finally visited my Amazon shopping cart and added All the Lonely People to my digital cart, purchasing it for my Kindle.

Why All the Lonely People? Well, the Doc’s praise was of the very highest calibre: “this is one of the best mystery novels that I’ve read in ages” he declared. And you could tell that he meant every word of it. So I eagerly began to read, hoping that I would see the same things in this book.