Literature: The Golden Age of British Crime Fiction

Each of the texts and authors will be studied in depth, with context, textual analysis, and an investigation of the text’s style and unique themes to the fore.

We will test the texts against Ronald Knox’s rules for detective fiction, which include: The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.

1. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.

2. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

3. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.

4. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

5. The detective himself must not commit the crime.

6. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.

7. The sidekick of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.

8. Twin brothers and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.

Quite clearly a number of these rules are tongue in cheek, and many sound an unmistakably quaint English note. The Golden Age’s novels are relatively narrow in focus, settling themselves in the upper-middle classes or aristocracy, often involving secluded country-houses and so forth. Many works by Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers & Agatha Christie were puzzle-based, and time and again one sees the emphasis placed on the sophisticated logic of the crime-solver. We shall attempt to account for the reasons for the continued appeal of these writers.