The Golden Age of Murder

As he explains in the Introduction, when Edwards himself became a published author of mystery fiction he was thrilled to be invited to join The Detection Club, about which he had first learned from the pages of Julian Symons' history of mystery writing Bloody Murder.

Subsequently he was made the club's archivist - only to discover that there were no archives; the club's only known minute-book had disappeared in the Blitz, and its priceless library had been sold off.

Inspired by his deep love of detective fiction, he set out to reconstruct some part of the club's history, of that "... elite but mysterious group of crime writers over which Sayers, Christie and Symons presided for nearly 40 years." In so doing, he discovered that the members themselves and events surrounding them were at least as fascinating as anything they had written about.

• As featured on The Guardian