The Golden Age of Murder

Winner of the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity and H.R.F. Keating crime-writing awards, this definitive account of the secretive Detection Club and its trail-blazing founders told for the first time the extraordinary story of British detective fiction between the two World Wars.

'Few, if any, books about crime fiction have provided so much information and insight' THE TIMES

A gripping real-life detective story, The Golden Age of Murder investigates how Dorothy L. Sayers, Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie and their contemporaries both competed and collaborated to turn the genre into a literary powerhouse that still dominates popular fiction today. Written in times of social and political turmoil, their books cast new light on unsolved murders whilst hiding clues to the authors' darkest secrets and their complex and sometimes bizarre private lives.

Ten years since its first publication, Martin Edwards - now the Detection Club's President and author of subsequent award-winning publications including Howdunit and the monumental The Life of Crime - revisits the story with major updates, new revelations and four brand new chapters that no crime connoisseur will want to miss.

'Illuminating and entertaining - provides a new way of looking at old favourites' LEN DEIGHTON

Martin Edwards has published eighteen crime novels, including series set in Liverpool and the Lake District. He has won the CWA Short Story Dagger and CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and his latest book, The Golden Age of Murder, won the Edgar, Agatha, Macavity and H.R.F.Keating awards. Martin is consultant for the British Library's Classic Crime series, as well as Chair of the CWA and President of the Detection Club. He has edited 30 anthologies, published about 60 short stories, and written seven other non-fiction books.