My name is Aidan and one of the information communities I am involved with is the Golden Age Detection community. Members of this community are interested in the detective fiction produced in the period between the two world wars, sometimes described as ‘the Golden Age of detective fiction’.

Much of the detective fiction of this period can be described as fair play. This term means that the author is expected to distribute clues in a way that the reader should be able to anticipate the solution through a process of logical deduction (Kinugawa, 2018). Such stories, sometimes described as traditional or puzzle mysteries, appeal to readers as a type of game they can play with the author in which they try to pit their wits against the sleuth.

The ‘Golden Age’ label itself is not one bestowed from a point of nostalgia but is derived from an article from The Saturday Review in 1939. The author of that article writes about the state of contemporary British fiction labeling detective fiction as ‘the only vigorous, thriving branch of English fiction’. While that may be read as praise for the detective novel, it can also be interpreted as a criticism of the general state of the British literary landscape of the time (Strachey, 1939). That assessment was an extreme one but it reflects that the detective novel was enjoying an unprecedented level of commercial success in that period. While writers continue to write novels in that style to this day, after World War II this style declined in popularity.

What appeals to me about this period of detective fiction is that it was an era in which the elements of the genre, such as fair play detection, were being established. Several prominent authors of the time such as S. S. van Dine produced lists of rules that they felt good detective fiction should conform to (Kinugawa, 2018). I find it interesting to see how authors were innovating and experimenting with the rules of the genre, many of which are still underpin it today.

Enthusiasts within the information community holds literary conferences and festivals such as The International Agatha Christie Festival, St. Hilda’s College Crime Fiction Weekend, Bodies at the Library. At those festivals academics, enthusiasts and modern authors specializing in this type of fiction will present papers and participate in panel discussions aimed at a non-academic audience. There are also literary magazines produced such as CADS (Crime and Detective Stories) published and distributed in a manner similar to fanzines.

Most of the information-sharing activities within the community however take place in virtual spaces online. The Golden Age Detection group on Facebook currently has close to 1900 users and there are similar groups on that and other web platforms. Many are led by enthusiasts, but some have been started by authors’ literary estates or the publishers reprinting these works. Some within the community belong to virtual book clubs and discussion groups focusing on detective fiction from this period.

Information-sharing in those spaces may include personal reviews of materials read with discussion of its themes, characters and other elements as well as also information about upcoming reprints or events. With most of the works produced in this period having been out of print for decades, these communities can be used to crowd-source information about writers and their works such as an accurate bibliography or the differences between particular editions.

Then there are individual blogs created on the WordPress and Blogger platforms. As I noted in my previous post for INFO 203, I have my own such blog but there are many more with some specializing on particular facets or themes of writing in that period. One such subset of the community are enthusiasts of locked room or impossible crime mysteries of the type written by John Dickson Carr. For those readers the question is not so much whodunnit as how the crime was achieved.

Another source, in addition to the social media accounts of enthusiasts on Twitter and Instagram, is The Golden Age of Detection Wiki. This is a community-created database with entries focused on authors and their books. The ambition is to become a resource covering all of the detective fiction produced in that era.

In recent years there have been several podcasts created devoted to discussing the Golden Age mystery or specific authors. An example of a general podcast is Shedunnit, hosted by Caroline Crampton, which mixes profiles of particular authors with discussions of how different authors treated particular themes or incorporated real-life cases or events into their novels. One author-specific podcast is the All About Agatha podcast in which a pair of fans undertook a challenge to read, discuss and rank every Agatha Christie novel in order (Netburn, 2022).

Finally, the Golden Age Detection community has also contributed to original works of detective fiction being reprinted. An example is Brian Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst novels. Steve Barge, of the In Search of the Classic Mystery blog, was instrumental in persuading publisher Dean Street Press to reprint them, connecting the publisher with the author’s estate. The estate did not hold copies of all of his novels meaning that the publisher had to source copies from elsewhere. Barge had many of the titles in his personal collection but not The Edge of Terror, nor were there any affordable copies available at that time. He eventually managed to secure the loan of a copy to scan for the reprint as a result of a blog interaction with a fellow fan, enabling the republication of that book to proceed (Barge, 2020). In other cases members of the community have helped publishers locate short stories printed in vintage newspapers.

What I appreciate most about my involvement in this community is that it has enriched my reading of these novels and broadened my understanding of the development of the mystery genre. Interactions with other enthusiasts have been responsible for introducing me to new writers, helping me to recognize where works are drawing on ideas and tropes established by other novels, and to learning about differences between publications of the same title in different territories or editions.

References:

Barge, S. (2020, September 28). Brian Flynn and Me – Here We Go Again. In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel. https://classicmystery.blog/2020/09/28/brian-flynn-and-me-here-we-go-again/

Netburn, D. (2022, October 10). Two podcasters set out to read every Agatha Christie book. It became much more than that. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-10/all-about-agatha-christie-podcast

Strachey, J. (1939, January 7). The Golden Age of English Detection. The Saturday Review. https://www.unz.com/print/SaturdayRev-1939jan07-00012