Murder for pleasure
1941
Howard Haycraft's Murder for Pleasure (1941) is a history of the first hundred-odd years of detective fiction. He begins with Edgar Allan Poe, ably dispenses with Wilkie Collins and Arthur Conan Doyle and their league of imitators (and in some cases, innovators), before landing upon Agatha Christie as the leader of the “Golden Age,” which Haycraft identifies as happening between 1918 and 1930 (since post-1930 qualifies as “the Moderns.”)
He largely gets the posterity prediction correct, as well as who the best or most influential mystery writers are—the only curious omission was Metta Fuller Victor for her pioneering novel The Dead Letter, but readers and critics were only dimly aware she wrote under the pseudonym of Seeley Regester (that connection emerged in later decades.)
Pleasure, as one would hope, is a key component of Murder for Pleasure. Haycraft wishes nothing more than the reader to take pleasure in crime fiction, and in his writing. So there are lists (“A Detective Story Bookshelf”) that offer a window into which books Haycraft believes stand out as the best of detective fiction, and also a catalog of which of these novels are utterly forgotten. Anthologies, too, are noted, and it’s a surprise how few existed in 1941—not even twenty, by his count.
- from "Mystery's First Great Historian" by Sarah Weinman
