The Detection Club

"The Scoop" first appeared as a serial in the Listener in 1931. "Behind the Screen" first appeared as a serial in the Listener in 1930. The two serials were first published in book form in the UK by Victor Gollancz Ltd in 1983 and in the US by Harper & Row in 1984. It was another foggy night in London when the members of the world-renowned Detection Club gathered to repeat the success of their jointly authored book, The Floating Admiral. Each writer worked on the mysteries without knowing the solutions the others had planned. When the creators of Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey and other sleuths get together, you can be sure the mysteries will be monumental, the detection delightful, and the results exciting!

The Detection Club is the oldest and most exclusive crime writing organization and it has always represented the cream of British crime writing talent. The founding and early members were amongst the most famous and best loved figures in the golden age - Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesteron, Dorothy Sayers, John Dickson Carr (the only American ever to be a member) among others - and membership remains by invitation only. Now to celebrate the impending seventy-fifth anniversary of The Detection Club, its members have produced The Detection Collection - a collection of eleven new stories from the best and the brightest in the British crime field. This outstanding collection is a must for crime lovers everywhere. The Part-Time Job by P.D. James Partnership Track by Michael Ridpath A Toothbrush by H.R.F. Keating The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars by John Harvey 'Going Anywhere Nice? by Lindsey Davis Between the Lines by Colin Dexter The Life-Lie by Robert Barnard The Woman From Marlow by Margaret Yorke Toupee for a Bald Tyre by Robert Goddard The Holiday by Clare Francis Fool of Myself by Reginald Hill The Detection Club: a brief history by Simon Brett

Seventeen Detection Club colleagues join together to create a surprise 80th birthday tribute to H.R.F. Keating that may be the most unusual festschrift ever assembled. Practically every contributor has chosen to memorialize a particular aspect of Inspector Ghote’s creator. Lionel Davidson focuses on his birthday celebration, Tim Heald his beard, Liza Cody his fascination with Hindu mythology, Catherine Aird a second-hand encounter with Keating in the south of France, editor Lovesey his hobby of “popping round to the post,” Len Deighton (in his first short story in 30 years) his passion for Sherlock Holmes. Robert Barnard takes off from Keating’s dislike of airports; Jonathan Gash sets a romantic triangle on a ship out of Bombay; June Thomson inscribes a dying message inspired by Keating; P.D. James traces the impact of a Ghote novel on a murder at school; and James Melville recalls Keating’s charlady/sleuth Emma Craggs. Thinly disguised versions of Keating are suspects in the stories of Reginald Hill, Colin Dexter and Michael Z. Lewin. In honor of Keating’s verse novel Jack the Lady Killer, Simon Brett supplies a short story in verse. Andrew Taylor and Michael Hartland venture further afield before Sheila Keating concludes the volume with a reprint of her husband’s “Arkady Nikolaivich.” --Kirkus review

A unique anthology for crime aficionados - six 'perfect murder' stories written by the most accomplished crime writers of the 1930s, designed to fox real-life Scotland Yard Superintendent Cornish, who comments on whether or not these crimes could have genuinely been solved. Is the 'perfect murder' possible? Can that crime be committed with such consummate care, with such exacting skill, that it is unsolvable - even to the most astute investigator? In this unique collection, legendary crime writers Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Freeman Wills Crofts, Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike each attempt to create the unsolvable murder, which Superintendent Cornish of the CID then attempts to unravel. This clever literary battle of wits from the archives of the Detection Club joins The Floating Admiral and Ask a Policeman in showing some of the experts from the Golden Age of detective fiction at their most ingenious.

Lord Comstock is a barbarous newspaper tycoon with enemies in high places. His murder in the study of his country house poses a dilemma for the Home Secretary. In the hours before his death, Lord Comstock’s visitors included the government Chief Whip, an Archbishop, and the Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. Suspicion falls upon them all and threatens the impartiality of any police investigation. Abandoning protocol, the Home Secretary invites four famous detectives to solve the case: Mrs Adela Bradley, Sir John Saumarez, Lord Peter Wimsey, and Mr Roger Sheringham. All are different, all are plausible, all are on their own – and none of them can ask a policeman... To produce this classic whodunit, the Detection Club adopted a completely new approach: Milward Kennedy proposed the title, John Rhode plotted the murder and provided the suspects, and four of their contemporaries were asked to lend their well-known detectives to the task of providing solutions to the crime. But there was to be another twist: the authors would swap detectives and use the characters in their sections of the book. Thus Gladys Mitchell and Helen Simpson swapped Mrs Bradley and Sir John Saumarez, and Dorothy Sayers and Anthony Berkeley swapped Lord Peter Wimsey and Roger Sheringham, enabling the authors to indulge in skilful and sly parodies of each other. The contributors are: John Rhode, Helen Simpson, Gladys Mitchell, Anthony Berkeley, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Milward Kennedy.