Golden Age of Detective Fiction

Stacking The Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews and Reading Reality, all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, whether physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical stores or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts, eBooks, and audiobooks.

Purchased eBooks

What could be more innocent than a crossword puzzle? A game to while away an idle hour, a diversion for the lonely. And yet its cunning formula could still be turned to sinister purpose. The curious crossword devised by Mr. George Winterton turned out to be part of a game for high stakes – it was the creation of a man whose brother had just drowned and who feared for his own life. Yet the dog hadn’t barked… When Detective-Constable Owen (B.A. Oxon, pass degree only) arrives in the picturesque village of Suffby Cove, he is faced with the mystery of an appallingly ingenious murder – one whose ramifications reach out of England to the continent, and touch the lives of many men and women. Crossword Mystery is the third of E.R. Punshon’s acclaimed Bobby Owen mysteries, first published in 1934 and part of a series which eventually spanned thirty-five novels. This edition features a new introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. “What is distinction? The few who achieve it step – plot or no plot – unquestioned into the first rank. We recognized it in Sherlock Holmes, and in Trent’s Last Case, in The Mystery of the Villa Rose, in the Father Brown stories and in the works of Mr. E.R. Punshon we salute it every time.” Dorothy L. Sayers

Amazon

Series: Bobby Owens (3)

Publisher: Dean Street Press.

Publication Date: June 1, 2015. Originally published in 1934.

Print length: 260 pages.

I’ve been on a crossword mystery kick after reading The Marlow Murder Club, and it’s sequel, Death Comes to Marlow. My grandma also got me hooked on this “Crossword Mysteries” series by Hallmark that we like to watch together. When I saw another crossword mystery, I had to check it out.

“Who knows if he didn’t make away with her here? Those things found in the Home Coppice show that she was made away with plain enough, I say.”
Jim Gregory, under-gardener at Hargreave Manor, finds something unexpected when climbing Lover’s Oak but won’t say what. Instead he’s all ears regarding the legendary ‘Luck of the Hargreaves’ diamonds, destined for the future bride of Sir Arthur, the new squire.
Sir Arthur himself then discovers a beautiful stranger, lost in the woods near the manor. She cannot recall a thing—not even her name. She is given shelter and Mary Marston, a private nurse, recognizes her—and abruptly goes missing. Nurse Marston must still be in the house, it is initially agreed—but if so, where?
Who got rid of Nurse Marston? To whom does the tobacco pouch with the floral design belong? And why was a blood-stained cuff found in the woods? These mysteries, and more, Superintendent Stokes is determined to solve. The Blue Diamond (1925) is a classic of early golden age crime fiction. This new edition, the first in over eighty years, features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans

Amazon

Series: None.

Publisher: Dean Street Press.

Publication Date: March 1, 2016. Originally published in 1925.

Print length: 155 pages.

I don’t have many books that feature amnesia as an obstacle for the detective to overcome, and I am interested if it’s real or feigned. Part thriller, part romance, and billed as light reading, The Blue Diamond seems easy to read as I fly to some summer weddings in August and early September.

The D.D.I. recognized him and smiled. “That was a great case you brought us. You’ll be interested to hear that it is a case of mur-r-der!”
For eight years Basil Thomson headed the famous C.I.D., New Scotland Yard. He knew the Yard inside out. Now in this tale of mystery and detection we are taken behind the scenes. We are shown the greatest detection machine in the world in motion, and see how the Yard tracked down its man.
Stand, then, with young P.C. Richardson on the misty corner of Baker Street, while the traffic of the city swings by, and fate lays at his feet the beginning of his career. Out of the fog brakes shriek, a big car jolts to a stop, and from beneath the wheels the crowd disentangles a bundle of old clothes, within which is a man quite dead; a man who had said to someone, “Very well, then; I’ll call a policeman”—and was killed. Work with him to the ingenious solution, when he takes from his pocket the clue holding the fate of a human life.
Richardson’s First Case was originally published in 1933. This new edition, the first in over seventy years, features an introduction by crime novelist Martin Edwards, author of acclaimed genre history The Golden Age of Murder.

Amazon

Series: Inspector Richardson (1)

Publisher: Dean Street Press.

Publication Date: April 4, 2016. Originally published 1933.

Print length: 235 pages.

The first book in a new to me golden age mystery series with an introduction by Martin Edwards made Richardson’s First Case a really attractive purchase. Recommend your favorites from the Inspector Richardson series below.