Hercule Poirot may sometimes have hovered perilously between cardboard cut-out and eccentric Holmesian cliché, but Christie transcended his weaknesses by constructing fabulously intricate problem plots. She was mathematical in her plotting, but also deceptive, and her killer instinct left no one exempt. In The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which catapulted her into prominence in 1926, she treacherously breached detective etiquette by making the trusted narrator the murderer. This violation only enhanced her profile, beginning her reign as one of the world’s greatest detective writers. Interestingly, her stories were local and almost over-brewed in their Englishness. They were set typically in rural English villages, like the fictional St Mary Mead, the home of Christie’s other iconic sleuth, Miss Jane Marple. This was a world at risk from the emerging economies of the 20th century, but in the 1920s and 1930s a habitat still existed for the country squire, his family, servants and fore-lock-tugging gardeners and tradesmen. This was where the privileged Christie lived, and it was familiar to, or at least a desirable fantasy for, many of her readers. Miss Marple made her appearance in the midst of this cosy ordinariness, knitting and gossiping her way through the solution to her first Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. This elderly, mystery-solving spinster began as a bloodless archaism, severe, blue-eyed, frail and wearing a black lace cap and mittens, but she would update herself through 12 novels, becoming warmer, wittier and more human. No other author has given so much snooping talent to a female figure of such advanced years, and created such a charismatic character.
Agatha Christie’s writing followed the strict detective novel formula, with a tightly structured beginning, a middle that explored the possibilities of the plot, and an end that neatly tied everything up. This rigid form gave her absolute control. But in 1926 her own life was less conveniently scripted. In the wake of her much-loved mother’s death and her dashing military husband’s elopement with one of her acquaintances, she disappeared. Her car was found mysteriously abandoned in a chalk pit. She would be discovered 10 days later, at a Harrogate spa, checked into the hotel under the surname of her husband’s mistress, Nancy Neele. The English press at the time accused her of orchestrating the event to promote sales of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, her first book published by Collins. Although she began a new life with archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, whom she married in 1930, the events surrounding her separation and divorce from Archibald Christie remained a mystery. Her autobiography describes the incident in terms of a mental breakdown or fugue, which seems a likely explanation for the disappearance of the intensely publicity-shy author. But publicity it did generate. The civilian response to police calls to mount a nationwide manhunt was almost unprecedented. Among the hundreds who searched for Agatha Christie was a young woman called Dorothy Sayers.
In 1923, Whose Body? introduced Sayers’ foppish, monocle-wearing Lord Peter Wimsey. Operating as an amateur detective with friendly Inspector Charles Parker of Scotland Yard and manservant Bunter, Wimsey would work out whodunit and how in 11 novels and 21 short stories. There was much of Dorothy Sayers in the make-up, or rather make-believe, of her detective, and this is probably why she fell so famously in love with him. He was a projection of her fantasies. Wimsey was hugely rich and it gave her pleasure to spend his money for him. ‘When I was dissatisfied with my single unfurnished room, I took a luxurious flat for him in Piccadilly,’ she wrote in 1936. ‘When my cheap rug got a hole in it, I ordered him an Aubusson carpet. When I had no money to pay my bus fare I presented him with a Daimler Double Six…and when I felt dull I let him drive it.’
Wimsey began almost as a figure of farce, a caricature in his snobbish, over-mannered elegance, but he would evolve into an admirable man. He and Bunter were inspired in part by humorist and writer P.G. Wodehouse’s bungling Bertie Wooster and gentleman’s gentleman, Jeeves. But Sayers put existing models of the detective under a magnifying glass. Where his predecessors were mostly upper-class gentlemen, Wimsey was a blue-blooded aristocrat, the second son of the 15th Duke of Denver. He was educated at Eton, taking his degree, as Sayers had, at Oxford, where he received a First in history. His breeding was impeccable and his eccentricities refined to a high art. He was a talented musician, a collector of ancient books, and a connoisseur of fine wines, food, fashion and fast cars. Even his athletic prowess was consummate. At university he played cricket for Oxford, and when in sleuthing mode he dangled effortlessly from ropes off buildings. Only in visualizing his appearance did Sayers show restraint. Perhaps he could be called nondescript with his tow-coloured hair, beak-like nose and modest stature.
Wimsey’s life was vastly different from that of his creator. Dorothy Sayers’ first two detective novels were written during a difficult period. In 1921 she became infatuated with writer-journalist John Cournos, a man not prepared to return her love. She rebounded into an even less appropriate match with motorcar enthusiast Bill White, who, after a brief fling, left her pregnant and unmarried. Although she was a modern woman earning her living as a copywriter for Benson’s Advertising Agency, she was also a conservative and ultimately devout High Church Anglican. She was the only child of older parents. Her father had been the chaplain of Christ Church, Oxford, and headmaster of the choir school. She felt unable to tell her parents, in their 70s, about the arrival of their grandson, John Anthony, in 1924. As a result she kept the baby secret, fostering him with her cousin Ivy Shrimpton. Her relationships with Cournos and White were never made public, and neither was the fact that she had an illegitimate son. Even when she wed older Fleet Street journalist Mac Fleming in 1926, she lived a double life divided between her flat in London and country home in Witham. Mac, who left paid work because of illness soon after they married, was part of her provincial life and many of her London friends never knew he existed.
Unlike Agatha Christie, Sayers created her sleuth to pay the bills, and the same was true for another of the reigning Queens of Crime, Margery Allingham. Younger than her two co-rulers, and something of a prodigy, she came from a working literary family of writer-journalists and editors. She was eight when her first story was published in her aunt’s magazine; her first novel, Blackkerchief Dick, came out in 1923 when she was 19. The White Cottage Mystery, her first story with a detective theme, was serialized in the Daily Express before it was produced as a novel in 1927, but it was not until The Crime at Black Dudley was published in 1929 that she had her first real success. It was in this book that she introduced her enigmatic Albert Campion. He began as a relatively minor figure, but when he captured the imagination and endorsement of her American publishers he was duly plucked from the chorus to become a star. There is more than a whiff of Wimsey and Wooster in Campion’s demeanour, and he may have been created as a spoof of the archetypal silly-ass sleuth. His pedigree was the most illustrious yet, because of his connection to royalty, although his exact relationship to the throne was never made specific. In fact, very little about this slippery snoop’s identity was specific. He had an assumed name, and there were other aliases. He was even physically ambiguous. His voice was described as idiotic and effete. A wiry albino-blond with buckteeth, he wore horn-rimmed spectacles and had a blank, unintelligent stare, but he was also heralded as a woman magnet.
Campion began as a modish young man-about-town with no serious intentions, but this was a smokescreen. In reality he moved easily between nobility and the criminal underworld to solve his crimes. Although a freelance government agent, and therefore seemingly on the right side of the law, his underworld connections were as close as his lugubrious valet, Magersfontein Lugg, who appeared first in Mystery Mile, in 1930. Lugg was a reformed cat burglar and borstal jail-bird, with a rich cockney accent and amusing turn of phrase. He would become the absent-minded Campion’s minder and nanny. Allingham wrote another 17 novels and 20 short stories with Campion as her hero-sleuth. Like Wimsey, he developed into a more complex and compelling figure as the novels progressed. Her plots improved along with her characters, but their strength remained in the element of risk rather than the intellectual puzzle plot. She created tension by evoking a sense of fear and foreboding that could be as disturbing as