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.

eBook Purchases

Goodreads Blurb:

The Abbotts travel to Texas and their dachshund finds a dead body in a mystery starring “one of the more interesting married teams of detectives” (Thrilling Detective).

When Jean Abbott arrives in Dallas to join her private investigator husband, Pat, she’s disappointed to discover that their dog, Pancho, is not welcome at the hotel. She finds a temporary place for him with the daughter of Pat’s wealthy client, oilman Iles Dollahan. Then little Pancho comes across a corpse on the secretive family’s property–and the Dollahans put the pressure on to presume the death an accident so that it will be swiftly forgotten. With no obvious suspects to suggest murder, that could be a possibility–until Pat finds a will that changes everything . . .

The Flying Red Horse

Series: Pat and Jean Abbott Mystery (#12)

First published January 1, 1949. This edition published on July 5, 2022 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road.

Goodreads Blurb:

Glancing at her more closely, he noticed dark stains on her white gown. Horror-struck, he bent over her for a moment, and realised that it was unmistakably a corpse.
Little Polly Spencer liked to visit her hiding place up on the London rooftops, to escape a scolding or worse from her stepmother. Peeping through a studio window, she sees what looks like a burglary. But signs of robbery are merely a cover for murder – and the young figure on the roof seemingly the only witness to the crime.
Polly is sent to live with her well-born mother’s family, her secret kept from the police. More than a decade later, she has become Lady Warchester, the wife of a wealthy titled man—yet, in a world utterly removed from her childhood, she will finally face the pale-faced killer she glimpsed through the window all those years ago. And the danger of having seen too much is about to become acute…
The Witness on the Roof (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.

The Witness on the Roof

247 pages, Kindle EditionPublished

First published January 1, 1925. This edition was published March 1, 2016 by Dean Street Press.

Book Purchases

Goodreads Blurb:

“You talk of him as if he were alive.” “He is alive,” said Benbow Smith. “And you think he would do murder?” “I am quite sure that he would do murder, Captain Loddon.”

Rose Anne disappeared on the eve of her wedding to Captain Oliver Loddon. Her fiance received a letter posted from Paris saying she was sorry but there was someone else.

To the police it is quite simple. But Oliver can’t believe Rose Anne capable of such a cruel act, and then discovers that her note carries quite another message. Benbow Smith is brought in to investigate, and we learn the young woman’s disappearance is connected to an escaped and dangerous criminal – and Rose Anne isn’t the only one who’s recently gone missing…

Down Under was originally published in 1937, and was the fourth and last novel to feature the series character Benbow Smith. This new edition features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

Down Under

Series: Benbow Smith (#4)

218 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1937. Published April 22, 2016 by Dean Street Press.

Goodreads Blurb:

Detective Club Crime Classics
A special 100th anniversary edition of J.S. Fletcher’s best detective novel, recognised as one of the Golden Age’s earliest and most successful classic stories.

An unidentified elderly gentleman is found bludgeoned to death in London’s Middle Temple, that enclave of justice between Fleet Street and the Thames. After due investigation the police conclude that it was merely a case of robbery. But Frank Spargo, a young journalist who senses a scoop, and Inspector Rathbury of New Scotland Yard, who doesn’t, soon unearth fresh clues and join forces to solve an intricate and intriguing mystery.

Joseph Smith Fletcher was a British writer and fellow of the Royal Historical Society who had studied law before turning to journalism. Dubbed ‘the Dean of Mystery Writers’, his literary career spanned some 200 books, with the seminal The Middle Temple Murder acclaimed as one of the genre’s defining novels, popular on both sides of the Atlantic with readers, critics and US Presidents alike.

This Detective Club classic is introduced by the detective fiction historian Nigel Moss, celebrating 100 years since the book’s first publication. It includes the bonus of Fletcher’s earlier short story ‘The Contents of the Coffin’, his precursor to the full-length The Middle Temple Murder.

The Middle Temple Murder

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1919. Published January 10, 2019 by Collins Crime Club.