London Between the Wars

London Between the Wars by G.M. Malliet

Reprinted by kind permission of Janet Rudolph, editor of Mystery Readers Journal.

Between the two World Wars, London became the home of what came to be called the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. Using the city’s cosmopolitan backdrop, authors like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Anthony Berkeley crafted stories that mirrored society’s fascination with crime and played on the chaos of an unstable world, with few suspecting that the Great War was not the war to end all wars. These crime writers catered to a population craving escapism from lingering hardships with stories where sleuths and detectives restored law and order to an upended society.

The popularity of today’s true crime books and podcasts may be a modern-day twist on this craving, if often without the satisfying tying off of clues offered by the Golden Agers. Post-WWI, London’s contrasting neighborhoods helped feed the genre’s popularity. The difference between affluent Mayfair and the poverty-stricken East End fed the social commentary within many of these novels, where crime underlined the differences between the haves and have-nots. London’s foggy streets and stuffy drawing rooms created settings ripe for tales of intrigue where war’s atrocities could be reproduced in contained, domestic miniature.

In Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials Mystery (1929), she took readers into a dodgy London club to expose layers of conspiracy, demonstrating how even high society could be marred by corruption and criminality. Perhaps like me you prefer her village mysteries, but London always offered more scope for her international thriller-style adventures.

Dorothy L. Sayers was another master of the London-based mystery, using the city as a canvas for her iconic detective Lord Peter Wimsey. In Murder Must Advertise (1933), set in a London advertising agency, Sayers made her mark with themes of consumerism and amorality. Since she worked at an ad agency herself, it is difficult to escape the certainty this book was based on her (unpleasant) experience there. Lord Peter works undercover in this his eighth mystery, solving a crime with links to London’s high and low societies.

Margery Allingham gave us Albert Campion, another detective who moves fluidly between London’s upper-class society and its criminal fringes. The Tiger in the Smoke (1952) is the book most think of as her London book, with its sky “yellow as a duster.” But one of her best books was written in 1940 in stolen moments between air raids, and although not entirely set in London, it includes London-based elements as it follows Campion through a high-stakes wartime mystery. Tense and atmospheric, Traitor’s Purse (1941), in which Campion effectively loses his mind, captures the fear and uncertainty of wartime.

Anthony Berkeley, creator of the popular amateur sleuth Roger Sheringham, embroidered his books with inventive plots and keen psychological insights. The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929) is a famous hallmark of interwar crime fiction, with its witty satire shot through an intriguing whodunit. The novel features different solutions to a single crime, showcasing Berkeley’s innovation and feeding the era’s fascination with puzzle stories. By viewing the solution(s) through the prism of the London club where his characters convene to solve the mystery, Berkeley uses the city’s club culture and its posh denizens to expose the rifts in society.

The success of London-set crime novels between the wars stemmed from their clever plots and memorable characters, but also from their London backdrops. Many of the stories could have been transplanted to another city, but too much would have been lost in the move. By capturing the essence of interwar London—a city simultaneously recovering from one war and dreading another—crime writers offered readers both a thrilling escape and a sense of certainty in uncertain times.
In that way, these stories have never seemed more timely.

G.M. Malliet is the author of three mystery series—DCI St. Just, the Rev. Max Tudor, and PI Augusta Hawke—and many short stories featuring London-based, between-the-wars amateur sleuth Magdalene Duchateau. Her first novel was named one of the ten best novels of the year by Kirkus Reviews.