Detective fiction is a subgenre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator or a detective—either professional, amateur or retired—investigates a crime, often murder. The detective genre began around the same time as speculative fiction and other genre fiction in the mid-nineteenth century and has remained extremely popular, particularly in novels. Some of the most famous heroes of detective fiction include C. Auguste Dupin, Sherlock Holmes, and Hercule Poirot. Juvenile stories featuring The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and The Boxcar Children have also remained in print for several decades.
A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex plot-driven variety of detective fiction in which the puzzle regarding who committed the crime is the main focus. The reader or viewer is provided with the clues to the case, from which the identity of the perpetrator may be deduced before the story provides the revelation itself at its climax. The investigation is usually conducted by an eccentric, amateur, or semi-professional detective.
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1929 by American crime fiction writers Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee and the name of their main fictional character, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murders. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the more than thirty novels and several short story collections in which Ellery Queen appeared as a character, and their books were among the most popular of American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. In addition to the fiction featuring their eponymous brilliant amateur detective, the two men acted as editors: as Ellery Queen they edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime, and Dannay founded and for many decades edited Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961, Dannay and Lee also commissioned other authors to write crime thrillers using the Ellery Queen nom de plume, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; several juvenile novels were credited to Ellery Queen, Jr. Finally, the prolific duo wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross.
Edmund Crispin was the pseudonym of Robert Bruce Montgomery, an English crime writer and composer known for his Gervase Fen novels and for his musical scores for the early films in the Carry On series.
Christopher Fowler is an English thriller writer. While working in the British film industry he became the author of fifty novels and short-story collections, including the Bryant & May mysteries, which record the adventures of two Golden Age detectives in modern-day London. His awards include the 2015 CWA Dagger in the Library, The Last Laugh Award (twice) and the British Fantasy Award, the Edge Hill Prize and the inaugural Green Carnation Award. His other works include screenplays, video games, graphic novels, audio and stage plays. He was born in Greenwich, London. He lives in Barcelona and King's Cross, London.
Ann Carol Crispin was an American science fiction writer, the author of twenty-three published novels. She wrote several Star Trek and Star Wars novelizations and created an original science fiction series called StarBridge.
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels of similar patterns and styles, predominantly in the 1920s and 1930s.
The Moving Toyshop (1946) is a work of detective fiction by Edmund Crispin, featuring his recurrent sleuth, Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor of English Language and Literature.
Love Lies Bleeding is a detective novel by Edmund Crispin, first published in 1948. Set in the post-war period in and around a public school in the vicinity of Stratford-upon-Avon, it is about the accidental discovery of old manuscripts which contain Shakespeare's long-lost play, Love's Labour's Won, and the subsequent hunt for those manuscripts, in the course of which several people are murdered. Collaborating with the local police, Oxford don Gervase Fen, a Professor of English who happens to be the guest of honour at the school's Speech Day, can solve the case at the same weekend.
The Case of the Gilded Fly is a locked-room mystery by the English author Edmund Crispin, written while Crispin was an undergraduate at Oxford and first published in the UK in 1944. It was published in the US a year later under the title Obsequies at Oxford.
Gervase Fen is a fictional amateur detective and Oxford Professor of English Language and Literature created by Edmund Crispin. Fen appears in nine novels and two books of short stories published between 1944 and 1979. Fen is an unconventional detective who is often faced with a locked room mystery to solve.
Constable Guard Thyself is a 1934 mystery detective novel by the British writer Henry Wade. It was the third in a series of seven novels featuring the character of Chief Inspector Poole, although it was preceded by the 1933 short story collection Policeman's Lot in which seven of the twelve stories had feaured Poole. After his more experimental novel Mist on the Saltings Wade returned to the traditional detective model.
Dark Bahama is a 1950 thriller novel by the British writer Peter Cheyney. It was the second in a trilogy featuring the private detective Johnny Vallon, a hard-drinking former army officer. The story also features Quale, the head of British intelligence who appears on several other novels by Cheyney. Much of the action takes place in a fictional island in the Bahamas and nearby Miami in Florida.
Beware Your Neighbour is a 1951 detective novel by the British writer Cecil Street, writing under the pen name of Miles Burton. It was part of a lengthy series of books featuring the detective Desmond Merrion and Inspector Arnold of Scotland Yard. Unlike much of the series it takes place in suburban rather than rural England. Reviewing the novel in The Spectator Esther Howard wrote " I always find that Mr. Burton has nearly the most colourless detectives, prose-style and plots of anyone in the business, and Beware Your Neighbour, death in an exclusive thoroughfare, though mechanically adequate, is entirely devoid of excitement."
French Strikes Oil is a 1951 detective novel by the Irish-born writer Freeman Wills Crofts. It is the twenty eighth and penultimate entry in his series of novels featuring Inspector French, a Scotland Yard detective of the Golden Age known for his methodical technique. It was published in the United States by Dodd Mead under the alternative title of Dark Journey.
Holy Disorders is a 1945 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin. It the second in his series featuring the Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen. The novel is set in 1940 during the early stages of the Second World War. The title is a reference to Chaucer.
Swan Song is a 1947 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin, the fourth in his series featuring the Oxford Don and amateur detective Gervase Fen. It was the first in a new three-book contract the author has signed with his publishers. It received a mixed review from critics.
Buried for Pleasure is a 1948 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin, the sixth in his series featuring the Oxford professor and amateur detective Gervase Fen. As with the rest of the Fen novels, a complex Golden Age-style mystery is combined with elements of farce. Fen contests a by-election in rural constituency, but events are rapidly overtaken by a murder case. It features Detective Inspector Humbleby who also appeared in the next novel Frequent Hearses as well as most of the short stories in the series.
The Glimpses of the Moon is a 1977 detective novel by the British writer Edmund Crispin. It was the ninth and last novel in his series featuring Gervase Fen, an Oxford professor and amateur detective. Written from the 1960s onwards on publication it was the first novel in the series to be released since The Long Divorce in 1951. The author died the following year and in 1979 a final work Fen Country, a collection of short stories featuring the detective, was publish posthumously.
What Happened at Hazelwood is a 1946 detective novel by the British writer Michael Innes. It is a standalone novel from the author who was best known for his series featuring the Golden Age detective John Appleby. In this novel his role is fulfilled by Inspector Cadover who also appeared later in an Appleby novel A Private View. It takes the form of a country house mystery. Ralph Partridge writing in the New Statesman observed "Michael Innes may be a Professor of English in disguise but What Happened at Hazelwood would never win him a Chair of Detection. I suppose we should be grateful that it is not a surrealist thriller, and that Inspector Appleby is off duty."
