Category: 1930s
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Flowers for the Judge
Margery Allingham, 1936 It’s no secret that I’m a big Campion fan. Originally designed to be a parody of the upper-class amateur detective, particularly Sayer’s Peter Wimsey, as time goes on and the series develops, Campion develops himself and becomes his own distinct(ish) self. This is helped by the two authors’ different writing styles, with…
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The Case of the Late Pig
Margery Allingham, originally published 1937 I would say that Margery Allingham is an author who does not get enough credit for her work. She is one of the ‘Queens of Crime’, yes but rarely would I guess her name is the first name that would come to someone’s mind when listing Classic Crime authors. Third…
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Malice Aforethought
Malice Aforethought, the first of three books written by Francis Iles, was published in 1931. It was actually the 9 or 10th novel published by author Anthony Berkeley Cox, praised for his detective Roger Sheringham who first appeared in the 1925 novel The Layton Court Mystery. As a fan of Berkeley Cox, and his cutting…
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Reading suicide in Agatha Christie – part one
Below is the introduction from my MA dissertation, titled Justice, despair or plot; reading suicide in the novels of Agatha Christie, submitted in 2022 as part of Medical Humanities at Birkbeck. When one looks at collected thematic works of Agatha Christie, for example the upcoming Bloomsbury Handbook to Agatha Christie, similar themes emerge: the impact…
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The murder of my aunt
Richard HullOriginally written: 1934, reissued by British Library Crime Classics “It’s fantastic. Making me laugh” – my mother. This is a fantastically fun use of an awful first-person narrator, who decides to murder his own aunt. Which is not a spoiler, but the premise of the novel. Edward, the narrator, is generally disgruntled, unimpressed and…
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Have his carcase
Dorothy L. Sayer, published 1932 I have a mixed relationship with Dorothy L. Sayers’ novels. I really enjoyed the first five or so of her Whimsy novels and was fascinated by the portrayal of PTSD and the trauma from World War One in her earlier books – a level of psychological insight rare for early…
One of those three 