Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and is currently revived by Taking on a World of Words. You can participate by answering the three questions below and leaving a link to your post in the comments for others to look at. No blog? No problem! Just leave a comment with your responses. Please, take some time to visit the other participants and see what others are reading. So, let’s get to it!

What are you currently reading?

“Philo Vance: Man of Action,” said nobody never. And yet Kidnap shows real signs of Van Dine’s responding both to the changing times―friends, it’s not the Jazz Age any more―and to the public’s changing tastes, as Philo does much less sitting around pontificating and much more running around chasing bad guys. To accommodate this new, Action Philo, the plot is somewhat simplistic, featuring not only a purloined playboy but also a demand that the ransom be left at midnight in a hollow tree. However, Philo’s newfound skills with a pistol are additions to his bag of tricks, rather than replacements for the tricks we know and love; rest assured that he retains every ounce of his customary implausible charm.

Amazon

Ngaio Marsh was, among other things, a well-respected theatrical producer (having started out as an actress), and her passion for and knowledge of the theater was displayed in many of Alleyn’s adventures. In Enter a Murderer, the Inspector has been invited to an opening night, a new play in which two characters quarrel and then struggle for a gun, with predictably sad results. Even sadder, the gun was not, in fact, loaded with blanks.

Amazon

What did you recently finish reading?

Carmona is lucky not to marry Alan Field. Charming though he may be, the young man is a rascal, and though her heart breaks when he disappears on the eve of their wedding, she is surely much better off. By the time she learns that Alan has decamped for South America, she has already given her heart to a more deserving suitor. Several years later, Alan reappears—desperate for money and as charming as ever. An author is writing a biography of Alan’s late father, and it is up to the prodigal son to go through his father’s letters. He finds a bundle of scandalous correspondence, and begins to form a plan. It begins as blackmail, but quickly spins out of control. By the time the first body appears, the prim detective Maud Silver is already on the case.

Amazon

 Mrs. Smith is not the first woman who has come to Maud Silver, the genteel private detective, claiming that someone is trying to kill her. She tells a story of attempted poisoning, a shove down a flight of stairs, and a house full of relatives who might want to push her out of the way. Miss Silver is intrigued, not least because this is not Mrs. Smith. Despite her attempt at a disguise, the detective recognizes the woman as Adriana Ford, the grand dame of the London stage. Mrs. Smith was a ruse; the attempts on her life are quite real. There is soon a body at Adriana’s country estate, but it is not the actress who has been killed. Fully interested, Miss Silver travels to the house, where she learns that the actress is not the only one who tells lies.

Amazon

The Chichester is making a routine journey across the English Channel on a pleasant afternoon in June, when the steamer’s crew notice something strange. A yacht, bobbing about in the water ahead of them, appears to have been abandoned, and there is a dark red stain on the deck… Two bodies later, with no sign of a gun, there certainly is a mystery in the channel.

Inspector French soon discovers a world of high-powered banking, luxury yachts and international double-dealing. British and French coastal towns, harbours―and of course the Channel itself―provide an alluring backdrop to this nautical adventure, along with a cast of shady characters.

Amazon

Looking for adventure, an erstwhile medical student joins the crew of a yacht and finds himself adrift in a sea of murder

Medical school left Leslie with a diploma, a new dress suit, and an incipient case of typhoid fever. While convalescing, he hatches a plan to postpone embarking on a career as a surgeon by launching instead on an epic voyage of adventure, mystery, and romance on the high seas.

Amazon

What will you read next?

A 1920s cruise ship is destined for destruction in this cozy mystery by the author of The Great Hotel Murder.

For the passengers aboard the Latakia, the transatlantic journey from New York to Cherbourg promises weeks of rest and relaxation, no matter what class of ticket they have. But after an Italian baroness is found strangled in her cabin, the situation on board becomes more tense. The main suspect soon goes overboard, creating more questions than answers: Did a guilty conscience spur a suicidal act, or was he a witness silenced by the true killer, still at large on the luxury liner. 

Enter former intelligence officer Walter Ghost, tapped by the ship’s captain to play detective and solve the murder. He’s joined by his friend Dunsten Mollock, a novelist whose experience with mystery stories gives him helpful insights into the case. With clues including an amateur film, a doll, and a card from Memphis, Tennessee, it seems the duo have plenty to work with. But will they be able to solve the crime before word of the murder makes it into the steamship’s rumor mill, surely sending any guilty persons even deeper into hiding?

Originally published in 1929 and out of print for nearly a century, Murder on “B” Deck is a puzzling-yet-humorous whodunnit set in the Golden Age of transatlantic travel.

Amazon

What have you been reading this week?