The Rise and Fall of the British Detective Novel (2010)(historytoday.com)
historytoday.com
The Rise and Fall of the British Detective Novel (2010)
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/rise-and-fall-british-detective-novel
24 comments
In case you are not aware, most of the titles discussed in the article are available for free as high quality ebooks at https://standardebooks.org because they are in the public domain. I have read way too many detective novels since discovering this website.
Which of them did you like best? Apart from obvious choices like Poe, Doyle or Christie.
A bit all over the place. If you include bond, which is not detective fiction but exclude rebus which is ... I mean sure, it's a nice read, but crime fiction is alive and well.
Robert Harris comes to mind too.
If the point is that whodunit has moved on, so has almost every other genre.
Robert Harris comes to mind too.
If the point is that whodunit has moved on, so has almost every other genre.
Casino Royale isn't cited as an example of golden age English detective fiction, the article suggests that books like Casino Royale, "with twists at every turn" and "overt depictions of sex and violence" were part of a new style of popular fiction which displaced the classical English detective story
Crime fiction is not just alive and well, it's at the top of bestseller. Robert Galbraith's new book (The Hallmarked Man) was #1 in the bset seller list, with almost 50k copies sold (one of the most sold books of the year). And it's #8 in the Cormoran Strike series.
"The Hallmarked Man is a crime fiction novel written by the British author J. K. Rowling, and published under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
Released on 2 September 2025, it is the eighth book in the Cormoran Strike series of detective fiction novels, following The Running Grave."
Released on 2 September 2025, it is the eighth book in the Cormoran Strike series of detective fiction novels, following The Running Grave."
We're getting ai summaries on HN now?
Hard to interpret that example, since the popularity of “Robert Galbraith” is strongly driven by who the author really is.
If it was trash, I doubt that it would still be a best-seller on its book #8 on the series, twelve years in.
Furthermore, given what's surrounding its author, there's a non-negligible part of the readers community that won't read it, just because of its author. And it can be seen as _risky_ to read anything she publishes. During a party, someone decided to stop talking to me once I told I was currently reading a book in the series (we were discussing our current reading, so I wasn't trying to do anything smart here). On the other hand, I doubt there's people still buying her books just to _own the libs_.
Sure, it helped launching the series, but if there's still thousands people reading it after more than a decade, maybe it's because those people like it. Maybe.
Furthermore, given what's surrounding its author, there's a non-negligible part of the readers community that won't read it, just because of its author. And it can be seen as _risky_ to read anything she publishes. During a party, someone decided to stop talking to me once I told I was currently reading a book in the series (we were discussing our current reading, so I wasn't trying to do anything smart here). On the other hand, I doubt there's people still buying her books just to _own the libs_.
Sure, it helped launching the series, but if there's still thousands people reading it after more than a decade, maybe it's because those people like it. Maybe.
We can disagree.
1) In the grand scheme of world literature, JKR’s books are comparative trash. It’s also well-established that the first book was not successful until the real identity of the author was shared.
2) Harry Potter (and all of the related activity) is still hugely popular, despite JKR’s unpleasant views and behaviour related to trans people. Most people in the world aren’t locked into the online zeitgeist.
1) In the grand scheme of world literature, JKR’s books are comparative trash. It’s also well-established that the first book was not successful until the real identity of the author was shared.
2) Harry Potter (and all of the related activity) is still hugely popular, despite JKR’s unpleasant views and behaviour related to trans people. Most people in the world aren’t locked into the online zeitgeist.
I think there's a good argument that a "fall" happened. Only a decade after the "golden age" of detective novels, you hace a situation where a lot of once best-selling author's are no longer being published.
But like you point out, there's been a zillion other "rises" too. Maybe a more acurate but much longer article would be "the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise [...] of the British detective novel"
But like you point out, there's been a zillion other "rises" too. Maybe a more acurate but much longer article would be "the rise and fall and rise and fall and rise [...] of the British detective novel"
Exactly this.
Sherlock Holmes said it best :-)
“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.
-- From "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Every kid should be given a copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes canon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Sherlock_Holmes) This will turn them towards learning and practicing "The Art of Deduction (or Ratiocination according to Edgar Allan Poe)" like nothing else and will directly lead to them understanding the importance of Logic and Science/Mathematics in today's world.
For example, as a kid growing up in 80s India, i read whatever i could get my hands on (eg. Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley, Frederick Forsyth etc. etc.) but none of them really made a mark. Then somebody gave me a copy of "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" and i was zapped. Here was somebody who focused on reasoning and showed you the steps involved. Of course once you grew-up you realized that much of the "Deductions" were far-fetched/implausible but nevertheless the fire was lit. It directly led to my interest in Science/Mathematics and then a career in Software (much of Holmes' methods are directly applicable to Debugging).
“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial, I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools.
-- From "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
Every kid should be given a copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes canon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Sherlock_Holmes) This will turn them towards learning and practicing "The Art of Deduction (or Ratiocination according to Edgar Allan Poe)" like nothing else and will directly lead to them understanding the importance of Logic and Science/Mathematics in today's world.
For example, as a kid growing up in 80s India, i read whatever i could get my hands on (eg. Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Enid Blyton, Alistair Maclean, Desmond Bagley, Frederick Forsyth etc. etc.) but none of them really made a mark. Then somebody gave me a copy of "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes" and i was zapped. Here was somebody who focused on reasoning and showed you the steps involved. Of course once you grew-up you realized that much of the "Deductions" were far-fetched/implausible but nevertheless the fire was lit. It directly led to my interest in Science/Mathematics and then a career in Software (much of Holmes' methods are directly applicable to Debugging).
For anyone who's a big fan of the classic "puzzle mystery" type novel (I am so much I named a python library after it[0])- I would massively recommend also checking out some works in the Japanese Honkaku canon[1]. It's heavily inspired by the likes of Christie, Sayers, Marsh but with a heavy emphasis on "fair play", and also often, a lot more gore.
[0] https://github.com/benrutter/wimsey / https://codeberg.org/benrutter/wimsey
[1] https://killerthrillers.net/honkaku-detective-fiction/
[0] https://github.com/benrutter/wimsey / https://codeberg.org/benrutter/wimsey
[1] https://killerthrillers.net/honkaku-detective-fiction/
The TV series Columbo was a brilliant inversion of the British deceive story. Naturally, every story started with an upper-class murder, but from the start the audience was shown who the killer was and how the crime was committed.
The "mystery" was how the detective was going to figure it out.
The "mystery" was how the detective was going to figure it out.
It's called an "inverted mystery", originated by R. Austin Freeman in 1909.
There's a good piece on that form here: https://mysteriesahoy.com/2019/01/26/five-to-try-inverted-my...
There's a good piece on that form here: https://mysteriesahoy.com/2019/01/26/five-to-try-inverted-my...
Someone here mentioned the David Audley series by Anthony Price. I enjoyed it and will recommend it again. Although the starting premise is espionage, the stories are all detective mysteries. The plot is always intertwined with historical periods of Britain.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/59006-dr-david-audley-colon...
https://www.goodreads.com/series/59006-dr-david-audley-colon...
The classic stories described in the article may have died out in print form, but many of the tropes live on healthily in British TV. There's a vast range of charismatic, rationally insightful detectives to choose from. Granted, a lot of them are police officers which isn't true to the spirit of the article, but many are amateurs. I saw the genre referred to once as "cosy mystery" which pretty much hits it on the head (with, presumably, a candlestick.)
Do you mean like Ludwig? What else? I'm not in the UK, so often only see the best of British TV after someone has recommended it to me and I can go hunt it out.
Yeah that's a good example. That genre tends to export well so platforms like Britbox are absolutely full of them.
Robert Harris
Ann Cleeves
Robert Galbraith
Richard Osman
Tim Sullivan
Janice Hallett
Ian Rankin
JR Ellis
Alexander McCall Smith
And those are authors I'm reading because they were featured on some Kindle lists.
Ann Cleeves
Robert Galbraith
Richard Osman
Tim Sullivan
Janice Hallett
Ian Rankin
JR Ellis
Alexander McCall Smith
And those are authors I'm reading because they were featured on some Kindle lists.
https://www.athabascau.ca/syllabi/cmns/cmns358.html
This course, which I took a while back, was curiously extremely focused on pulp detective novels. I got the sense that it was a tenured professors hobby or something. Interesting, nonetheless.
This course, which I took a while back, was curiously extremely focused on pulp detective novels. I got the sense that it was a tenured professors hobby or something. Interesting, nonetheless.
ot but sherlock holmes, the most popular detective of them all spends several years of his life working for British counter espionage before ww1, thwarting his German rival. This before mi5 existed! I find it remarkable how conan doyle also managed to pioneer the spy novel genre.
Sherlock Holmes stories are very interesting to read in order because they span a good 40 years. The first stories are set in the classic Victorian setting with horses and carriages and in the later ones the first cars appear, WW1 happens, etc…