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The Golden Age of Murder
- Author
- Martin Edwards
- Narrator
- Leighton Pugh
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Publish Date
- 7 May 2015
- Run Time
- 16 hours 30 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
- Genre
- Classic crime and mystery fiction, Published diaries, letters and journals, Crime and mystery: cosy mystery, Historical crime and mysteries, Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction, Fiction based on or inspired by true events, Historical fiction, Narrative theme: love / relationships
- Rating
- 5.0 (1 review)
What to expect
Winner of the 2016 EDGAR, AGATHA, MACAVITY and H.R.F.KEATING crime writing awards, this real-life detective story investigates how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction.
Detective stories of the Twenties and Thirties have long been stereotyped as cosily conventional. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Golden Age of Murder tells for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two World Wars. A gripping real-life detective story, it investigates how Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie and their colleagues in the mysterious Detection Club transformed crime fiction. Their work cast new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors’ darkest secrets, and their complex and sometimes bizarre private lives.
Crime novelist and current Detection Club President Martin Edwards rewrites the history of crime fiction with unique authority, transforming our understanding of detective stories, and the brilliant but tormented men and women who wrote them.
Critics Review
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‘Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight so enthusiastically and, for the reader, so enjoyably’ THE TIMES
‘Illuminating and entertaining – provides a new way of looking at old favourites. I admire the way that Martin Edwards weaves the sometimes violent, sometimes unlawful, and always gripping true stories of these writers with the equally wild tales they tell in their books.’ LEN DEIGHTON, author of SS-GB
‘Forensically sharp and exhaustively informed… Crime fiction is driven by death. In this superbly compendious and entertaining book, Edwards ensures that dozens of authorial corpses are gloriously reborn.’ MARK LAWSON, GUARDIAN
‘Edwards knows his business. He understands how to parcel out the clues and red herrings so as to feed the reader enough information to keep a variety of possibilities open, while making sure to prepare for a satisfying solution.’ SEATTLE POST
‘You can learn far more about the social mores of the age in which a mystery is written than you can from more pretentious literature. I mean, if you want to know what it was like to live in England in the 1920s, the so-called Golden Age, you can get a much better steer from mysteries than you can from prize-winning novels.’ P. D. JAMES
User Reviews
Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
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5.0 5.0
I cannot say how many times I have read this wonderful book. I first heard this on YouTube, and quickly realised what an absolute mine of information it was, and made me determined to get a hard copy. Reading this cover to cover, opened my eyes to a whole world of vintage literature. My hobby is now scouring second hand book shops for books written by the eminent figures mentioned in these pages. Then, I ordered a copy of the updated version, and finally an audio version on the day I realised it had been removed from YouTube.
This book was the main reason I joined Xigxag, because now I can listen and immerse myself in the golden age as many times as I like.
A comprehensive account of the history of The Detection Club and the founder members. The style is accessible and engaging with brilliant narration by Leighton.
I cannot recommend this highly enough.AnnHird 2026-10-08
Details
- Author
- Martin Edwards
- Narrator
- Leighton Pugh
- Duration
- 16 hours 30 minutes
- Release Date
- 7 May 2015
- ISBN
- 9780008105990
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Genre
- Classic crime and mystery fiction, Published diaries, letters and journals, Crime and mystery: cosy mystery, Historical crime and mysteries, Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction, Fiction based on or inspired by true events, Historical fiction, Narrative theme: love / relationships
- Rating
- 5.0(1 review)
- Narration
- 5.0(1 review)
Synopsis
Winner of the 2016 EDGAR, AGATHA, MACAVITY and H.R.F.KEATING crime writing awards, this real-life detective story investigates how Agatha Christie and colleagues in a mysterious literary club transformed crime fiction. Detective stories of the Twenties and Thirties have long been stereotyped as cosily conventional. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Golden Age of Murder tells for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two World Wars. A gripping real-life detective story, it investigates how Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie and their colleagues in the mysterious Detection Club transformed crime fiction. Their work cast new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to their authors’ darkest secrets, and their complex and sometimes bizarre private lives. Crime novelist and current Detection Club President Martin Edwards rewrites the history of crime fiction with unique authority, transforming our understanding of detective stories, and the brilliant but tormented men and women who wrote them.
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