10 - Post-war British crime fiction

Summary

When Julian Symons published his classic study Bloody Murder in 1972, his forecast of a 'declining market' for straightforward detective fiction seemed reasonable. The once pre-eminent formula of crime, false trails and triumphant solution by a brilliant detective either looked very old-fashioned or had started to be replaced by other sources of interest, such as espionage or psychological suspense. At the time of writing, 2002, things look different. Detection is once more flourishing and, without sacrificing its traditional complement of early-discovered corpses, red herrings and surprise solutions, now enjoys a critical esteem in the 'respectable' marketplace that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. Books have also at least doubled in length: from the 200-odd pages which remained statutory up to the 1970s, many detective novels now weigh in at around 500.