Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers are still well-known, but who were the other stars of the interwar gilded age of crime fiction? This is a book full of forgotten gems, real-life dramas and the enthusiasm of highbrow admirers
Cultural periods declared as “golden ages” often tarnish on examination. The supposedly gilded schedules of British TV in the 1960s and 70s produced some series that are permanently repeated, but several that are now considered unwatchable due to bigotry or sloppiness.
In the case of the “golden age of detective fiction”, a term coined by the writer John Strachey in 1939 for crime novels between the world wars, the judgment has become progressively more suspect. The most enduring works of the period – such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories or the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries of Dorothy L Sayers – are presented even by some sympathetic historians as contrived receptacles for snobbery, sexism and antisemitism.
A now routine view is that crossword-puzzle plots with crudely characterised human clues – novels dismissively referred to as “humdrums” and “cosies” – gave way in the later 20th century to psychologically complex and elegant fiction written by PD James, Ruth Rendell and others.
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In the case of the “golden age of detective fiction”, a term coined by the writer John Strachey in 1939 for crime novels between the world wars, the judgment has become progressively more suspect. The most enduring works of the period – such as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories or the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries of Dorothy L Sayers – are presented even by some sympathetic historians as contrived receptacles for snobbery, sexism and antisemitism.
A now routine view is that crossword-puzzle plots with crudely characterised human clues – novels dismissively referred to as “humdrums” and “cosies” – gave way in the later 20th century to psychologically complex and elegant fiction written by PD James, Ruth Rendell and others.
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