The Authors

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sherlock Holmes — the consulting detective who set the template for everything that followed.

G. K. Chesterton

Father Brown — the unassuming priest whose weapon is an unsettling understanding of sin.

Edgar Wallace

The Four Just Men · The Crimson Circle — the era's most prolific thriller machine.

Josephine Tey

The Daughter of Time — Inspector Alan Grant solves a 400-year-old murder from a hospital bed.

S. S. Van Dine

The Benson Murder Case — the aesthete sleuth Philo Vance, and the author of "Twenty Rules" of the genre.

R. Austin Freeman

Dr. Thorndyke — the medico-legal detective; the pioneer of the forensic mystery and the "inverted" whodunnit.

Earl Derr Biggers

Charlie Chan — the Honolulu detective whose six novels became a Hollywood institution.

Marie Belloc Lowndes

The Lodger — the quintessential Jack the Ripper story, and a founding text of domestic suspense.

Baroness Orczy

The Old Man in the Corner · The Scarlet Pimpernel — armchair detection and the original masked hero.

J. J. Connington

Scientific · Highly detailed

Murder in the Maze · The Case with Nine Solutions

A chemistry professor's eye for method; rigorous, ingenious plotting.

Ethel Lina White

Suspense · Thriller

The Wheel Spins — filmed by Hitchcock as The Lady Vanishes.

A master of the ordinary woman in extraordinary danger.

Christopher St. John Sprigg

Witty · Satirical

Death of an Airman · The Six Queer Things

Sharp social comedy from a writer who also wrote Marxist theory as Christopher Caudwell.

Francis Beeding

Spy · Adventure · Mystery

Death Walks in Eastrepps — once hailed by Vincent Starrett as one of the finest detective novels.

A pen name shared by two writers, John Palmer (d. 1944) and Hilary Saunders (d. 1951).

Alice Campbell

Traditional whodunnit

Spiderweb · The Click of the Gate

An American in London and Paris; elegant, character-driven puzzles.