I’m not sure at what age I
was first introduced to British mystery novels.
It feels like they’ve always been a part of my life. I have read my way through series after
series of them, and the protagonist detectives, amateur or professional, seem
like old friends.
Whenever the unclean state of
our oceans and air, or the hateful rise of white supremacy, or some new health
scare (Benadryl = Alzheimers?? Alcohol is Bad for You???) begins to weigh on my
psyche, I reach for a British mystery.
Wikipedia dubs the 1920’s and
30’s the Golden Era of Detective Fiction.
Many of the murder mystery novels that were written during this era are
set in England, particularly in English Country Houses and the Clubs and Town
Houses of London.
Since I have read all of the
novels by the queens of this era (Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh,
Josephine Tey) I have a store of useless anachronistic knowledge about upper
class life in Britain.
Boots? The generic name for
the servant who cleaned footwear.
Folly? The pointless
structure in the back garden where you will find a vital clue, such as a
cigarette butt.
Kippers? Breakfast fish served in the morning room.
The Interval? Intermission at an opera, when the detective
will spot a suspect doing something odd.
Baize? The felt-like material that covered the door
to the servant’s wing of the house, always green.
Distributor? A vital part of a 1920’s automobile that was
forever getting wet or something and causing the detective to miss getting to
the house before the second murder.
You get the idea. It is a comforting world, and usually the
person who gets bumped off is some wicked uncle no one liked anyway.
This blog post was inspired
because I was just lounging on the sofa, drinking a can of La Croix Peach Pear,
and avoiding thinking about what to make for dinner by re-reading “The Unpleasantness
at the Bellona Club” by Dorothy Sayers, when I saw this line:
“It was Salcombe Hardy, of
the Daily Yell, large and untidy and slightly drunk as usual.”
Perfection.
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