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I Reread 7 “Golden Age” Queens of Crime Classics
Only one got the five-star treatment
Many enduring tropes of mystery fiction were born in the Golden Age. Like romance, Golden Age crime has been dominated as much by prominent women writers as by men. Is that why it is undervalued as a genre?
Should we make allowances for the prejudices of the time when reading these writers — racism, sexism, and xenophobia? Is it right to sanitise them for the modern era so that more copies can be sold? Does sanitising them do us a disservice by accepting these authors? Are we whitewashing vile beliefs and practices that were commonplace? Should we be editing and sanitising them to suit modern sensibilities and for sales?
I grew up with complete paperback sets of Marsh, Christie, Sayers and Heyer classics in my parents’ bookshelves. Others I discovered when I turned to eBooks in 2013. Real-world murder is rarely a clever, gentrified, glamorous affair — so why does this trope endure and why do I still love a good old mystery?
Golden Age crime, set between the two World Wars, is the precursor to modern cosy crime fiction. Hard-boiled detective fiction took over in the 1940s, yet the Golden Age still claimed a hold on readers, me amongst them. Its accepted “Queens” are Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and…
