The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards

The Golden Age of Murder 

Martin Edwards

2015

5/5 stars

This multiple award winning book studies the early history of the Detection Club, a social organization for mystery and crime authors, from it's inception in 1930 through the start of World War II.  Martin discusses the life and interests of these Golden Age writers, such as their fascination with real life crime, their relationships with each other, and the various secrets in their own lives.  He focuses more in depth on Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Anthony Berkeley than the most, but still includes a good deal of anecdotes and  information on many other members.

The Golden Age of Murder is an ode to the mystery novels and authors of  the Golden Age (the years between the two World Wars), and it's obvious that Edwards loves these devotedly.  Using the resources available to him as current President of the Club, he gives reams of stories about these authors that are enlightening as well as entertaining.  He discusses the real life murders that so interested this group, as well, and shows how those crimes influenced some of the Golden Age novels.

Edwards debunks popular myths about the genre and it's creators, as well as showing how current events shaped many of the plots, and further, how these books impacted future crime writers.

He discusses many of the most famous Golden Age stories, as well as mentioning lesser known authors and their works.  He is careful not to spoil the solutions of any of the novels, while giving tantalizing glimpses of the plots.  I now have a list of new-to-me authors and books to explore.

Edwards also uses his own deductive powers to answer questions about the secrets of Christie, Sayers, and Berkeley.  These are, of course, his own opinion and are meant to be taken as such, but he gives sound reasoning for his solutions.

I've seen complaints saying that if the reader does not have a basic understanding of this very specific period of fiction or a fascination with it, this book will be unreadable -- but why would such a one pick it up in the first place?  The Golden Age of Murder is, I believe, intended to be a gift from Edwards to his fellow fanatics and I found it to be just that.

Two of the Dread Penny Society Series by Sarah M. Eden

This is a series by Sarah M. Eden, each featuring a different member of the Dread Penny Society: a secret men's club made up of penny dreadful authors with a strong social conscience, who rescue children and women from the streets.  Eden alternates between the point of view of the two protagonists, and includes her own short stories as penny dreadfuls written by series characters.

The Lady and the Highwayman 
2019 
3/5 stars

Headmistress Elizabeth Black is the clandestine author of penny dreadful serials written as Mr, King. Top-selling author and Dread Penny Society member, Fletcher Walker, has his income threatened by Mr. King's success, so he sets out to uncover King's identity.  When Fletcher and Elizabeth meet by chance, they find an unlikely mutual spark that becomes something stronger the more they are together -- but Elizabeth must protect her hidden identity even from him, for the sake of her school.

First off, this is not my typical genre, as I don't generally enjoy romance novels. In addition, I'm coming to it with a background of extensive reading of Victorian sensational novels, and of having an above-the-average knowledge of Victorian England.  Due to that, I seem to be a harsher critic than most of the reviewers on Goodreads and Audible.

The Lady and the Highwayman is a sweet and clean light romance with a bit of adventure, and faux penny dreadful novels thrown in the mix.  The historical atmosphere was not convincing, and the combination of two greatly overused tropes (Victorian-lady-with-modern-views and Victorian-people-with-a-21st-century-amount-of-social-conscience) was trying. Eden's penny dreadful stories lacked a lot of the typical characteristics, so didn't feel authentic.  I waded through situations highly improbable in Victorian society, complicatedly contrived occasions for meeting, decisions that made no sense, and plot lines that eventually led nowhere (all with an audio book narrator I don't care for), because the DPS appealed to me on many levels, and I was curious where the story would go.  I wasn't fully satisfied by the ending, nor did I feel, given the social circumstances, that the romance would be possible for Elizabeth, yet. . . I did -- inexplicably -- rather enjoy this book.  Enough that I will give the second volume of the series a chance. 

The Gentleman and the Thief 
2020
Did Not Finish

I had the exact same problems as I did with The Lady and the Highwayman but, unfortunately, this one was so bland that I couldn't finish it.  As I said above, it's not to my regular taste anyway, so it's shouldn't be much of a surprise that it didn't grab me.