Supper Sleuths
Supper SleuthsIn what is known as the Golden Age of detective fiction (1920-1939), women writers took the spotlight. The quintet of Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh starred brightly during this era. The novelist focuses on a crime (typically a murder) and criminal, a victim, and a detective who resolves the crime through deduction, an examination of clues, and in some cases, a reconstruction of the crime itself. These mysteries have been called classical, traditional, or cozy, as well as village mystery, domestic malice, or Golden Age mystery.
Agatha Christie’s books have been published, translated, purchased, and read more than any others except The Bible, and The Mousetrap continues as the longest running play in London. Her position as the world’s most famous modern mystery writer remains unchallenged. The Mysterious Affairs at Styles, one of the most polished first mysteries ever penned, won her immediate recognition. Her detectives were an eccentric lot and unlike the upper-class, Oxbridge-educated, socially-prominent male detective. Hercule Poirot is an egg-shaped, retired Belgian policeman; Jane Marple is an elderly, English spinster; Ariadne Oliver is a scatterbrained middle-aged woman novelist; and Tuppence and Tommy Beresford, are an ex-nurse and an intelligence agent.
Dorothy L. Sayers keeps at the heart of her detective fiction, the upper-class, Oxbridge-educated, socially prominent, eccentric, heroic male detective. Lord Peter Wimsey is a thoughtful, introspective man, not the silly man-about-town that he could have easily become and affiliates himself with an official policeman, Charles Parker. And in mystery writer, Harriet Vane, Lord Peter has an intelligent, independent wife. Marjory Allingham’s Albert Campion follows a similar character pattern.
The following is a list of titles by both Agatha Christie & Dorothy L. Sayers. Whenever possible, the series is in order of publication date. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and please let us know if you feel that a title should be here. Many short story compilations were left off this list. Please read one or more title of each author, and come prepared to discuss your impressions of them with the group.
(Great Women Mystery Writers, ed. Kathleen Gregory Klein, 1994 & Sequels, 3rd ed. Janet & Jonathan Husband, 1997)
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