The golden age of the English detective story? I suppose from the late Nineties of the last century to the Fifties of this one. In 1929 the Detection Club was formed, its aims to outlaw "accoutrements of the genre" which had fallen into disrepute, such as "Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, and the like". Members were scrupulous in their observance of the rules - well, most of the time - but some of them were not averse to poking sly fun, such as E.C. Bentley with his: "Lord Peter Wimsey / May look a little flimsy, / But he's simply sublime -/ When nosing out crime." Most of the practitioners of the genre joined up, such as R. Austin Freeman, Nicholas Blake, Ronald Knox, H.C. Bailey, and a host of others. And they're all represented in this delicious volume, edited most perspicaciously by Patricia Craig. Personal favourites? Well, Gladys Mitchell's "Daisy Bell" has to be front and centre, with Carter Dickson's "The House in Goblin Wood" a close second. But they're all nuggets of their type. The best buy in detective fiction for many a long day.
Vincent Banville