But why is reading a classic British Golden Age ‘whodunnit’, with its often exaggerated snapshots of the English class system and bloody murder being done in the billiard rooms and libraries of great country houses, so much fun? I suspect that it’s because it’s rather like playing a game, and just like Cluedo, the board game based on the genre, there are rules.
In her excellent book Talking about Detective Fiction (Faber and Faber, 2010), the late crime queen P. D. James summed it up very succinctly:
What we can expect is a central mysterious crime, usually murder; a closed circle of suspects, each with motive, means and opportunity for the crime; a detective, either amateur or professional, who comes in like an avenging deity to solve it; and, by the end of the book, a solution which the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues inserted into the novel with deceptive cunning and fairness.
And, back in 1929, the British author and theologian Ronald Knox made an attempt to codify these rules by creating ‘The Ten Commandments for Detective Fiction’ (I mentioned them in passing in Chapter 29). They are that:
1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No Chinaman must figure in the story.
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective himself must not commit the crime.
8. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.
9. The ‘sidekick’ of the detective – the ‘Watson’ – must not conceal from the reader any thoughts which pass through his mind: his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
These rules were very much in my mind as I ‘played the game’ and, I happily confess, I broke as many of them as I could.2
Why?
Because, dear reader, real life doesn’t have a rule book! That’s something I learned very early on in my thirty-year career as a police officer. I hope you’ll take my deviance in the satirical spirit in which it was intended.
And now, on to the twenty-first-century thanks.
This book isn’t the first novel I’ve ever written. But it is the first that I’ve felt was good enough to put forward for publication and I am deeply indebted to everyone at Unbound for believing in it. Particular thanks go to Mathew Clayton and Phil Connor, who got the ball rolling, to Anna Simpson and Imogen Denny for guiding the book through its production, to Mark Ecob, Neil Gower and Livi Gosling for the amazing cover illustrations and design, and to my stalwart editors Tamsin Shelton and Justine Taylor.
Big thanks also go to my agent Piers Blofeld and to my cadre of critical readers, sounding boards and drinking chums: Jason Arnopp, Terry Bergin QC, Dr Sue Black OBE, Ben Dupre, Jo Haseltine, Steve Hills, Andrew Hodge, Andrew Kerr, Dr Sarah K. Marr, Dr Erica McAlister, Stuart Peel, Justin Pollard, Phil Speechley, Janice Staines, Tammy Stone, Huw Williams, Stuart Witts and the ever-dapper Michael Dillon who often had to endure my enthusiasm across the bar at Gerry’s Club, Soho. Thanks too to Mark Vent for suggesting the term ‘Millies’ and to Keith Sleight for the ACDC (Agnes Crabbe Detective Club). And additional thanks are due to Chris Addison, Jimmy Carr, Paul Cornell, Graham Linehan, Robert Llewellyn, Richard Osman and Holly Walsh for ‘bigging me up’, and to Neil, Sandi and Stephen for their generous cover quotes.
I must also mention Dawn, my long-suffering wife, who not only had to put up with me disappearing for days on end while I wrote this blighter, but who also had to endure me watching pretty much every episode of Marple, Poirot, Jonathan Creek, Columbo, Murder, She Wrote, Midsomer Murders and any other murder mystery that’s been on the telly for the past eighteen months. She’s a saint. And, annoyingly, she’s much better than me at guessing whodunnit.
*
Lastly, my warmest thanks must go to the wonderful, generous people who made this book possible by putting their hands in their pockets (or in other people’s pockets) to help fund its publication. In these sadly unenlightened times, when bookshops are as rare as ropes of tortoise hair, when publishers have become frustratingly risk-averse, and where the accountants have taken over the asylum, it’s people like them that keep writers like me on the bookshelves. I thank them from the bottom of my heart and they’re all listed on the following few pages.
If you’ve enjoyed this book, do consider helping to fund other new books at unbound.com.
Roll the credits . . .
Notes
1 There are many other authors worthy of note including Josephine Tey, Anne Hocking, Anthony Berkeley (writing under several noms de plume including Francis Iles and A Monmouth Platts), J. Jefferson Farjeon, Freeman Wills Crofts, G. K. Chesterson, E. C. Bentley, R. Austin Freeman, Michael Innes, Philip MacDonald . . . but space precludes my listing them all. And, of course, for the purposes of this book, we must also add Agnes Crabbe to the list. Oh, and if you’re interested in where Agnes Crabbe ‘came from’ (people are always asking authors where they get their ideas), she was inspired by the extraordinary story of photographer Vivian Maier whose work, like Crabbe’s novels, only became known after her death. Do look her up. Her story is fascinating.
2 The year before, in 1928, American mystery writer S. S. Van Dine – real name Willard Huntington Wright – created a rather more wordy ‘Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories’. They are easily found online and cover much the same ground as Knox’s ‘Ten Commandments’.
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The names listed below are of readers who have pledged their support and made this book happen. If you’d like to join them, visit www.unbound.com.
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