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.

Print Book Purchases

Goodreads Blurb:

Duchlan Castle is a gloomy, forbidding place in the Scottish Highlands. Late one night the body of Mary Gregor, sister of the laird of Duchlan, is found in the castle. She has been stabbed to death in her bedroom but the room is locked from within and the windows are barred. The only tiny clue to the culprit is a silver fish s scale, left on the floor next to Mary s body. Inspector Dundas is dispatched to Duchlan to investigate the case. The Gregor family and their servants are quick perhaps too quick to explain that Mary was a kind and charitable woman. Dundas uncovers a more complex truth, and the cruel character of the dead woman continues to pervade the house after her death. Soon further deaths, equally impossible, occur, and the atmosphere grows ever darker. Superstitious locals believe that fish creatures from the nearby waters are responsible; but luckily for Inspector Dundas, the gifted amateur sleuth Eustace Hailey is on the scene, and unravels a more logical solution to this most fiendish of plots. Anthony Wynne wrote some of the best locked-room mysteries from the golden age of British crime fiction. This cunningly plotted novel one of Wynne s finest has never been reprinted since 1931, and is long overdue for rediscovery.”

Murder of a Lady by Anthony Wynne

Series: Dr. Hailey (#12)

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931. February 2, 2016 by Poisoned Pen Press

Goodreads Blurb:

The very first case for Oxford-based sleuth Gervase Fen, one of the last of the great Golden Age detectives. As inventive as Agatha Christie, as hilarious as P.G. Wodehouse, this is the perfect entry point to discover the delightful detective stories of Edmund Crispin – crime fiction at its quirkiest and best.

A pretty but spiteful young actress with a talent for destroying men’s lives is found dead in a college room just yards from the office of the unconventional Oxford don Gervase Fen. Anyone who knew the girl would gladly have shot her, but can Fen discover who did shoot her, and why?

Published during the Second World War, The Case of the Gilded Fly introduced English professor and would-be detective Gervase Fen, one of crime fiction’s most irrepressible and popular sleuths. A classic locked-room mystery filled with witty literary allusions, it was the debut of ‘a new writer who calls himself Edmund Crispin’ (in reality the choral and film composer Bruce Montgomery), later described by The Times as ‘One of the last exponents of the classical English detective story . . . elegant, literate, and funny.’

This Detective Story Club classic is introduced by Douglas G. Greene, who reveals how Montgomery’s ambition to emulate John Dickson Carr resulted in a string of successful and distinctive Golden Age detective novels and an invitation from Carr himself to join the exclusive Detection Club.

The Case of the Gilded Fly

Series: Gervase Fen (#1)

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1944. This edition was published January 1, 2018 by Collins Crime Club.

Goodreads Blurb:

Small hostilities were growing; vague jealousies were gaining strength; and far off, wasn’t there a nebulous hint of approaching tragedy in the air?’

Welworth Garden City in the 1940s is a forward-thinking town where free spirits find a home-vegetarians, socialists, and an array of exotic religious groups. Chief among these are the Children of Osiris, led by the eccentric High Prophet, Eustace K. Mildmann. The cult is a seething hotbed of petty resentment, jealousy and dark secrets – which eventually lead to murder. The stage is set for one of Inspector Meredith’s most bizarre and exacting cases.

This witty crime novel by a writer on top form is a neglected classic of British crime fiction.

Introduction by Martin Edwards.

Death Makes A Prophet

Series: Superintendent William Meredith (#11)

First published January 1, 1947. January 2, 2018 by Poisoned Pen Press.

288 pages, Paperback

Kindle eBooks Purchases

Goodreads Blurb:

A boarder comes to live with three women and finds them frighteningly strange. From the outside, it seems like the three women of the Bayne house are frozen in time. There is Mrs. Bayne, an aging widow obsessed with propriety; her sister, Margaret, a spinster whose desperate loneliness is eating her from the inside out; and young Holly, a beautiful creature with a vibrancy that fades a little each day. Her only hope is Furness Brooks, a playboy with an idea that he might like to marry Holly, but each day that he doesn’t propose, she becomes more frightened that she will die an old maid. Into this steps Howard Warrington, a bond salesman who answers an advertisement to rent the Baynes’ extra room. He finds the house to be full of old secrets and quiet grudges, and he soon grows to hate his life there. But when Margaret attempts to kill herself, he realizes how dark life is for the women Bayne — and how difficult it might be for him to escape.

Two Flights Up by Mary Roberts Rinehart

254 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1928. Published June 1, 2014 by mysteriouspress.com

I am excited to add another Mary Roberts Rinehart mystery to my collection and the first Gervase Fen mystery. I found the Gervase Fen book at a used bookstore which was a bit of luck. I can’t wait to start this new series.