Really cold cases

When we read a contemporary thriller, we make sure the back door is bolted and the balcony grill is locked. We jump at shadows. We leave the bathroom light on. But reading about a murder that took place in another century is less scary. When the character walking down a dark alley wears buttoned-up boots and swings her full skirts out of the path of a passing carriage, we are more detached. To truly chill our blood, she would have to be shadowed by Bill Sykes.

About a month ago I was in a mood for a retro thrill, something other than my well-thumbed Complete Sherlock Holmes. From the lending library I pulled out Edgar Wallace’s Four Just Men, which was basically the conundrum of a murder inside a locked room. Then a Perry Mason from Erle Stanley Gardner, who wrote a string of them, with alliterative characters from Anxious Aunts to Terrified Typists. It was full of old-fashioned foot chases, week-long stake-outs, sniping dialogue, and the beginnings of technology. Della Street’s “trained fingers whirled the dial with swift precision”. On a rotary telephone. Isn’t that sweet?

Then I went way back, before the trench coats and fedoras. The Mammoth Book of Vintage Whodunnits, which I happened on last month, has some big names and some modest writers who have much to be modest about.

Full report here Business Standard