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- The Murder Room
- The Murder Room
Fiction, Crime & mystery, Classic crime
Golden Age detective fiction by a master of the craft.
When private investigator Miles Bredon and his wife, Angela, arrive for a weekend at the Hallifords' country house, they find themselves part of a singularly ill-assorted house party. Waking one morning to the news that one among their number has been found dead by the silo, Miles has no shortage of suspects.
The entire party had spent the previous night haring around the country side in an 'eloping' game instigated by their hostess, and no one can fully account for their whereabouts. The arrival of Inspector Leyland from Scotland Yard, investigating a spate of apparent suicides of important people, adds another dimension to the mystery, and Miles finds himself wondering 'whether the improbable ought to be told'.
Ronald Knox
It was Ronald Knox (1888-1957), who, as a pioneer of Golden Age detective fiction, codified the rules of the genre in his 'Ten Commandments of Detection', which stipulated, among other rules, that 'No Chinaman must figure in the story', and 'Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable'. He was a Sherlock Holmes aficionado, writing a satirical essay that was read by Arthur Conan Doyle himself, and is credited with creating the notion of 'Sherlockian studies', which treats Sherlock Holmes as a real-life character. Educated at Eton and Oxford, Knox was ordained as priest in the Church of England but later entered the Roman Catholic Church. He completed the first Roman Catholic translation of the Bible into English for more than 350 years, and wrote detective stories in order to supplement the modest stipend of his Oxford Chaplaincy.
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